Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumThe world is pumping out 57 million tons of plastic pollution a year
The world creates 57 million tons of plastic pollution every year and spreads it from the deepest oceans to the highest mountaintop to the inside of peoples bodies, according to a new study that also said more than two-thirds of it comes from the Global South.
Its enough pollution each year about 52 million metric tons to fill New York Citys Central Park with plastic waste as high as the Empire State Building, according to researchers at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. They examined waste produced on the local level at more than 50,000 cities and towns across the world for a study in Wednesdays journal Nature.
The study examined plastic that goes into the open environment, not plastic that goes into landfills or is properly burned. For 15% of the worlds population, government fails to collect and dispose of waste, the studys authors said a big reason Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa produce the most plastic waste. That includes 255 million people in India, the study said.
Lagos, Nigeria, emitted the most plastic pollution of any city, according to study author Costas Velis, a Leeds environmental engineering professor. The other biggest plastic polluting cities are New Delhi; Luanda, Angola; Karachi, Pakistan and Al Qahirah, Egypt.
https://apnews.com/article/plastics-waste-pollution-oceans-global-south-dd9ce2a092c5d5826a3436d9f47764c7
msongs
(70,170 posts)Probatim
(3,014 posts)and tell us there's no value in recycled plastics.
progree
(11,463 posts)From another thread, from PBS -
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143301569
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/the-world-is-producing-57-million-tons-of-plastic-pollution-per-year-new-study-finds
. . . The United Nations projects that plastics production is likely to rise from about 440 million tons (400 million metric tons) a year to more than 1,200 million tons (1,100 million metric tons ((by 2050, according to the link -progree)), saying our planet is choking in plastic.
In the latest (Sept 6) issue of The Week, there is a blurb about the situation in U.S. as far as plastics in the brain. In part: