A new study finds that every year people create 57 million tons of plastic pollution. The material winds up everywhere from the deepest oceans to the highest peak of Mount Everest to inside people's body.

India leads the world in generating plastic pollution, producing 10.2 million tons a year (9.3 million metric tons), far more than double the next big-polluting nations, Nigeria and Indonesia. China, often villainized for pollution, ranks fourth but is making tremendous strides in reducing waste, Velis said. Other top plastic polluters are Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia and Brazil. Those eight nations are responsible for more than half of the globe’s plastic pollution, according to the study’s data.

The United States ranks 90th in plastic pollution with more than 52,500 tons (47,600 metric tons) and the United Kingdom ranks 135th with nearly 5,100 tons (4,600 metric tons), according to the study.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
    12·
    2 months ago

    Article makes a good point:

    Outside experts worried that the study’s focus on pollution, rather than overall production, lets the plastics industry off the hook. Making plastics emits large amounts of greenhouse gas that contribute to climate change.

    "These guys have defined plastic pollution in a much narrower way, as really just macroplastics that are emitted into the environment after the consumer, and it risks us losing our focus on the upstream and saying, hey now all we need to do is manage the waste better,” said Neil Tangri, senior director of science and policy at GAIA, a global network of advocacy organizations working on zero waste and environmental justice initiatives. “It’s necessary but it’s not the whole story.”

    We focus on half the problem, the half we burn considerable fossil fuels to move the plastic waste just so it can be burnt somewhere else.

    No one is really doing enough.

    It’s just when you set metrics and only care about meeting those metrics, you often lose sight of the goal.