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 people’s bodies, according to a new study that also said more than two-thirds of it comes from the Global South.
It’s enough pollution each year — about 52 million metric tons — to fill New York City’s 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 Wednesday’s 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 world’s population, government fails to collect and dispose of waste, the study’s 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.
I checked my credit card statement and I can’t find “57 million tons of plastic” anywhere on it.
Meanwhile, I’m walking through literally any store anywhere, and it seems like every conceivable piece of commercial merchandise is trapped in a six-inch thick plastic clam shell. Like, you routinely get more packaging than product. I’m not asking for this. I don’t want to purchase it. But I’m told that anything not embedded in a plastic Ft. Knox has a 0.2% higher chance of being shoplifted, so I just need to accept this as a consequence of people voting without their wallets.