More than 1.3 billion tons of plastic waste will flow into the world’s oceans and land over the next two decades without widespread intervention, according to a group of scientists who developed a new computer model to track the flow of global plastic pollution.
Single-use plastic has surged in production in recent decades, filling up oceans and land with waste and overwhelming the capability of waste management systems across the world to dispose of and recycle the plastics.
While a global effort to curb plastic consumption and pollution could mitigate pollution by roughly 80%, even under a best-case scenario for global action, about 710 million metric tons of plastic will be dumped into the environment by 2040, according to a new report, “Breaking the Plastic Wave.”
“This scientific inquiry has for the first time given us a comprehensive insight into the staggering amounts of plastic waste that are being dumped into the world’s terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems,” Costas Velis, a lecturer at the University of Leeds in the U.K. and an author of the report, said in a statement.
To make matters worse, the pandemic has also interrupted global waste management systems and caused significant cuts in plastic prices.
China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand contribute the most plastic waste into oceans, according to a 2015 report from the Ocean Conservancy. China is the biggest producer of plastic pollution globally.
Source: CNBC
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