Two statistics jump out immediately. Take a look in the kitchen and you might see a plastic chair or bar stool seats plastic countertops acrylic composites plastic linings PTFE in your nonstick cooking pans and plastic plumbing in your water system.
Single Use Plastics The Elephant In The Ocean Cascades Recovery
According to Forbes people buy a staggering one million plastic bottles per minute around the world.
How much plastic is used daily. While many of us make efforts to. The differences in them make them ideal for different uses. This article takes a look at how normalised plastic has become and how integrated it is within our daily lives.
Put one after another they would go around the world 7 times every hour and cover an area twice the size of France. While overall the amount of recycled plastics. Thats 160000 a second.
Each polymer chain comprises many repetitive units formed from monomers the chemical building blocks which form polymers. More than 300 million tons of plastic are produced worldwide every year. United States 335 g per person per day China 121 g per person per day India 10 g per person per day.
Over half of the worlds plastic thrown out in 2015 was plastic packaging. 42 of plastic used in India is used solely for packaging. Material Science of Plastics.
About one trillion single-use plastic bags are used annually across the globe. Theyre in the roofs walls flooring and insulation that make homes and buildings energy efficient. Over 500000000 plastic straws are used each day in the United States.
Only about 23 of. There were 19 million grocery bags and other plastics bags collected in the 2018 International Coastal Cleanup. Several recent reports indicate the dire global situation associated with the worlds plastic use.
Here are daily plastic usage figures from some other countries for comparison. Two-thirds generated by households and one-third by industry and commerce. Almost 48 million metric tons of plastic end up in the worlds oceans annually according to a 2015 study from the University of California Santa Barbara.
Below we go through a typical day highlighting where you would come into contact. This means around half our plastic usage is one time use and throw. For example LDPE is soft and flexible so it is used in garbage bags films wraps bottles and disposable gloves.
Thats nearly 2 million every minute. Plastic is a substance made up of synthetic or non-synthetic organic compound ie chains of carbon atoms pure or with the addition of oxygen nitrogen or sulfur. Thats colossal wouldnt you agree.
EPA used data from the American Chemistry Council and the National Association for PET Container Resources to measure the recycling of plastic. These different types of plastic are used daily for many purposes. More than half a billion plastic straws are used every day around the world.
Humans buy about 1000000 plastic bottles per minute in total. Now open your refrigerator. The primary data source on the generation of plastics is the American Chemistry Council.
Worldwide use per capita stands at about 35 kilograms. Versatile plastics inspire innovations that help make life better healthier and safer every day. The chances are youve not given it much thought.
This year 5 trillion plastic bags will be consumed. The mass use of plastic started in. One that globally humans buy a million plastic bottles per.
Theyre in the cell phones televisions computers and other electronic equipment that makes modern life possible. It takes 12 million barrels of oil to make those bags. HDPE is a harder plastic and is used mainly in containers but was first introduced in the hula hoop.
Every year 300 million tons of plastic materials come into circulation be it in the form of plastic packaging utensils containers bags or even clothing. This plastic can be separated into two different types including low-density polyethylene and high-density polyethylene. 275000 tonnes of plastic are used each year in the UK which is equivalent to around 15 million bottles per day and thats just the single use plastics.
Are we too lazy or uncoordinated to lift a drink to our mouth and tilt our head back. In 2016 world plastics production totaled around 335 million metric tons. The largest amount of plastic waste comes from the packaging industry.
The food might be wrapped in PVC cling film your yogurt is probably in plastic tubs cheese in plastic wrap and water and milk in blow-molded plastic. Roughly half of our global annual plastic production is destined for a single-use product. 100 billion plastic bags are used in the US.
15 thousand tonnes of plastic waste is generated everyday in India. Marine pollution mainly made up of plastic bottles and polystyrene floating in Hinnavaru. Plastics are used to make bicycle helmets child safety seats and airbags in automobiles.
In 2018 plastics generation was 357 million tons in the United States which was 122 percent of MSW generation. The Ocean Conservancys 2015 coastal cleanup collected more than 18 million pounds of trash from beaches and waterways around the world.
