Researchers looked at 51 samples and found that after excluding the weight of the water, each gram of sediment contained an average of 1.26 microplastic pieces. t in 2015. Reisser has also founded a new organisation to investigate new plastics using seaweed as the basic material. 300 million tons of plastic waste is produced each year around the world. The … Production is expected to double by 2050. Analysis of ocean sediments from as deep as 3km suggests there could be more than 30 times as much plastic at the bottom of the world’s ocean than there is floating at the surface. She said she believed the vast majority of plastics were actually accumulating on coastlines. Much of the macroplastics in our shorelines is from the past 15 years, but still a significant amount is older suggesting it can persist for several decades without breaking down. Ocean gyres pull floating plastic together to form ocean garbage patches. Since the 1950s about 8 billion metric tons of plastic have been produced. Leaders from more than 70 countries signed a voluntary pledge in September to reverse biodiversity loss which included a goal to stop plastic entering the ocean by 2050. The vast majority – 82 million tonnes of macroplastics and 40 million tonnes of microplastics – is washed up, buried or resurfaced along the world’s shorelines. More than 9 billion tons of plastic have been made since the 1950s, and the vast majority of it has been thrown in the trash, says a new study. And by 2025, the annual cumulative output of plastic into the world’s oceans will be around 155 million metric tons. US scientists have calculated the total amount of plastic ever made and put the number at 8.3 billion tonnes. Located between California and Hawaii, the patch covers an area twice the size of Texas and three times the size of France. How Much Plastic Is Produced? Of the 8.3 billion metric tons that has been produced, 6.3 billion metric tons has become plastic waste. The chart shows that by 2015, the world had produced 7.8 billion tonnes of plastic — more than one tonne of plastic for every person alive today. Larger plastic can entangle wildlife, while microplastics and even smaller pieces could be consumed by an array of species from plankton to whales. Over 300 million tons of plastic are produced every year. But she said the shape of the pieces under a microscope suggested they were once consumer items. The world has produced over 9 billion tons of plastic since then and TWO THIRDS have ended up in the environment - including our oceans. Plastic water bottles are petroleum based. Sorry. In 2015 global plastic’s production grew by 3.4% compared to 2014. Hardesty said it wasn’t possible to know how old the pieces of plastic were, or what sort of object they had once been part of. This is estimated at 2.16%, with 300 million tons of plastic produced annually and approximately 6.5 million tons of plastic waste entering the sea. “The marine science community has been really obsessed with finding out where the plastic is,” Reisser, who was not involved in the study, said. Microplastics are 5mm or less in diameter and are mostly the result of larger plastic items breaking apart into ever smaller pieces. Ten percent is recycled, while 12% is incinerated. Although the exact amount of plastic in the oceans cannot be accurately quantified, it is estimated that 150 million metric tons of plastic circulate the world's oceans. All maps, graphics, flags, photos and original descriptions © 2021 worldatlas.com, Countries Putting The Most Plastic Waste Into The Oceans, The Causes And Effects Of Ocean Pollution. In the U.S alone, it takes 1.5 million barrels of oil to meet the demands. Dr Denise Hardesty, a principal research scientist at CSIRO and a co-author of the research published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, told the Guardian that finding microplastic in such a remote location and at such depths “points to the ubiquity of plastics, no matter where you are in the world”. By 2020 the number of plastics in the sea will be higher than the number of fish. Multiple scientific methods were needed to understand the potential impact of plastics on ocean wildlife. But she said the amount of plastic on the ocean floor was relatively small compared to all the plastics being released, suggesting the deep sea sediments were not currently a major resting place for plastics. Between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes of plastic enter the ocean each year, according to figures published in the journal Science in 2015 . t in 1950 to ~322 Mio. It is estimated that about eight million metric tons of plastic find their way into the world's oceans every year. Unfortunately, many of the developing countries which accept plastic imports, especially in the wake of China’s ban, do not have strict regulations on how to deal with this waste, and much of it … About 75% of deep ocean fish have consumed plastic due to the scarcity of food at the deep sea level. Six decades after its commercialization, the plastic is wreaking environmental havoc across the globe by clogging drainage systems, choking rivers and accumulating in the ocean. • Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) from 1950 to 2015 is about 8.6%. These plastics come in many different forms. The world uses 500 billion plastic cups every year. However, plastic had a shortcoming: it was non-biodegradable. By Victor Kiprop on June 7 2018 in Environment. “I think the ultimate fate [of marine plastics] is the deep sea, but we are far from being at equilibrium,” she said. What types of plastic are the most damaging and just how big is the problem? In the latest paper, the authors note their estimate of the weight of microplastics on the ocean floor is between 34 and 57 times what may be at the surface. She said the new study was an important contribution to global efforts, and hoped the deep-sea data from Australia could be combined with other efforts worldwide for future studies to get a more accurate picture. SBS News explains. A previous study in the journal Science has estimated about 8.5m tonnes of plastic ends up in the oceans every year. Using a similar approach as they did when figuring the mass, the team chose to employ conservative estimations of the plastic count. #8: 16 billion disposable coffee cups are used each year. FACT #1: About 8 million metric tons of plastic are thrown into the ocean annually.Of those, 236,000 tons are microplastics – tiny pieces of broken-down plastic smaller than your little fingernail: FACT #2: There are five massive patches of plastic in the oceans around the world. In 2017, the U.S. produced nearly 35.4 million tons (32 million metric tons) of the stuff, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. While this may seem a large figure, Hardesty said it was small compared to the amount of plastics likely entering the ocean each year. Of that, only nine percent has been recycled. “If we could travel a thousand years into the future, that plastic will have slowly fragmented and been removed from our coastline.”. Thirty times more plastic on ocean floor than surface, analysis suggests, but more trapped on land than sea, Last modified on Mon 5 Oct 2020 20.42 BST. In 2019, the production of plastics totaled around 368 million metric tons worldwide. 1 Includes Thermoplastics, Polyurethanes, Thermosets, Elastomers, Adhesives, Coatings and Sealants and PP-Fibers. At least 14m tonnes of plastic pieces less than 5mm wide are likely sitting at the bottom of the world’s oceans, according to an estimate based on new research. A total of 1.8 trillion plastic pieces were estimated to be floating in the patch – a plastic count that is equivalent to 250 pieces of debris for every human in the world. Much of the plastic that does not end up in landfill or go through other waste management pathways (such as recycling or incineration) is thought to end up in the ocean. It is estimated that 250 metric tonnes of plastic will be in the oceans by 2030, and by 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish. Much of it gets discarded and eventually ends up in our oceans. This is more evidence that we need to stop this at the source.”. At last count, there were at least 8.3 billion tons of plastic in the world. According to a report by the United Nations, the world produces roughly 300 million tons of plastic each year and half of it is disposable. Production increased exponentially, from 2.3 million tons in 1950 to 448 million tons by 2015. That’s the weight of nearly 90 aircraft carriers, and the problem continues to grow. Of the 260 million tons of plastic the world produces each year, about 10 percent ends up in the Ocean, according to a Greenpeace report (Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans, 2006). The correct figure is 9%. Aquatic animals are becoming trapped in fishing nets at an increasingly staggering rate, while thousands more are mistaking plastic for food. They are responsible for the production of 19.5% of plastic used in the world. • Plastics production ramped up from 1.5 Mio. “This means it’s throughout the water column. How much plastic has the world produced cumulatively? The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) is the largest of five known garbage patches in the world's oceans. Every year, about 8 … South Australia's ban on single-use plastic cutlery and straws hailed as 'historic', Microplastic pollution devastating soil species, study finds. Stemming the tide of plastic entering the world’s waterways and ocean has emerged as a major international challenge. Plastic is not only piling up in the oceans, but is also causing more harm to marine animals than any other element. This invention, which he named Bakelite, was nothing extraordinary until the 1960s when businesses realized that plastic could be used as packaging material. estimated that in 2016 between 19m and 23m tonnes, 250,000 tonnes of plastic floating on the ocean surface. Australia’s government science agency, CSIRO, gathered and analysed cores of the ocean floor taken at six remote sites about 300km off the country’s southern coast in the Great Australian Bight. The patch holds between 1.1 and 3.6 trillion pieces of plastic float, which weighs 100,000 tons. 13 billion bottles are used each year in the UK, with just 57% / 7.5 billion being recycled; 1,500 plastic bottles are thrown away every second of every day. Furthermore, an additional 8 million metric tons are added annually. In September, a study estimated that in 2016 between 19m and 23m tonnes of plastic found its way into both rivers and ocean. Ten percent is recycled, while 12% is incinerated. There are 8.3 billion tons of plastic in the world Industrial-scale production began in the 1950s and has been gathering pace ever since. Animal entanglement, microplastic ingestion, bioaccumulation of toxins, endocrine system disruption in humans - these are just a few of the devastating effects that plastic pollution has on us and the environment. In 1907, Belgian-American chemist Leo Henricus Arthur Baekeland created the first form of plastic based on a synthetic polymer. An estimate 1,500 plastic bottles end up as waste in landfills or thrown in the ocean every second. 8.3 billion plastic straws pollute the world’s beaches, but only 1% of straws end up as waste in the ocean. ‘We need to make sure the big blue is not a big trash pit,’ says the CSIRO’s Denise Hardesty, whose research suggests there could be 30 times as much plastic at the bottom of the ocean than on the surface. #9: The world produces more than 14 million US tons of polystyrene (plastic foam) each year. These are coated with plastic to laminate the inside and use plastic lids. Photo Credit: European Commission … They also encourage recycling and enforce regulations on its management. Half of the plastics that land in the ocean are less dense than water, meaning that they float. The US is has been proactive at regulating the usage of plastic by launching single-use plastic bans throughout major US cities. The United States of America are ranked the third country producing plastic in the world, they produce quantity of about 38 million tonnes and their exported dollar value of plastic is worth US$6.8 billion. Correction (March 12th 2018): The headline of this piece previously stated that only 7% of the world's plastic is recycled. That makes plastic bags the second most common kind of waste item found in coastal cleanup. “We need to make sure the big blue is not a big trash pit. The uncontrolled production of plastic led to the emergence of production facilities that were easy to set up and finance in developing states. What followed was the commercialization of plastic, most of which was used as packaging material. A plastic bag is used for only 15 minutes on average but can last for a … “Much more is being trapped on land than at sea,” she said. All the same, the world currently uses millions of tons of plastic, and it all has to go somewhere. 8 million tons of plastic end up in the world’s oceans every 12 months. It is estimated that 300 million tons of plastic is produced every year, and half of this plastic is used just once and then disposed. Plastic pollution is ubiquitous throughout the marine environment, yet estimates of the global abundance and weight of floating plastics have lacked data, particularly from the Southern Hemisphere and remote regions. Major countries that did not sign the pledge included the United States, Brazil, China, Russia, India and Australia. Scientists predict by 2050, there will be more plastic in our seas than there are fish. Plastic proved to be popular among businesses and consumers, as it was cheap to produce and easily disposable. The world uses 500 billion single-use plastic bags every year. Almost 8 million metric tons of plastic end up in the world's oceans annually, according to a 2015 study from the Unversity of California Santa Barbara. One out of every 10 items picked up in an International Coastal Cleanup in 2009 was a plastic bag. “It is useful to give people a sense of the scope and scale that we are talking about,” she said. Plastic pipes help save water, we have a 25% shortage of water in the world. Our oceans are choking. Another study has estimated there is 250,000 tonnes of plastic floating on the ocean surface. Plastic wasn’t invented until the late 1800s and the production of plastic didn’t take off until around 1950. This gives us pause for thought about the world we live in and the impact of our consumer habits on what’s considered a most pristine place,” she said. Plastic food packaging helps save food waste, we throw away one third of all food produced for human consumption. It is estimated that 300 million tons of plastic is produced every year, and half of this plastic is used just once and then disposed. Americans alone throw away around 25 billion Styrofoam cups every year. While it’s tough to say exactly how much plastic is in the ocean, scientists think about 8 million metric tons of plastic entered the ocean in 2010. Analysis of ocean sediments from as deep as 3km suggests there could be more than 30 times as much plastic at the bottom of the world’s ocean than there is floating at the surface. But then it really took off. The world uses over 500 billion plastic bags a year – that’s 150 for each person on Earth. The amount of plastic in the world exploded from 1.5 million tons in 1950 to 340 million tons in 2016. Seventy percent of the mass eventually sinks, damaging life on the seabed. The cores were drilled in March and April 2017 between 288km and 349km from the coast, at depths of between 1,655 metres and 3,016 metres. There are 500 times more pieces of microplastic in the sea than there are stars in our galaxy and by 2050 it is estimated there will be more plastic than fish How plastic is damaging planet Earth. This means that 50 per cent of 300 million tons of plastic in use takes thousands of years to be disposed completely after it is used only once. Marine plastic debris is one of the most pressing environmental concerns facing the world today. Hardesty said there were imperfections in the estimates, but they were based on the best available information. Dr Julia Reisser, a marine biologist at the University of Western Australia’s Oceans Institute, has been researching plastic pollution for 15 years. (Image: © Shutterstock) We're drowning in plastic. For the study, the researchers extrapolated the amount of plastic found in their core samples and from research from other organisations to conclude as much as 14.4m tonnes of microplastic was now on the ocean floor globally. 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