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The United States is the world leader in generating plastic waste, producing an annual 42 million metric tons of plastic waste. [59] [60] Per capita generation of plastic waste in the United States is higher than in any other country, with the average American producing 130.09 kilograms of plastic waste per year. Other high-income countries ...
Six types of commodity polymer account for about 75% of plastics waste, with the rest comprising a myriad of polymer types, including polyurethanes and synthetic fibers with a range of chemical structures. Items made from the same type of polymer may be incompatible with each other depending on the additives they contain.
Packaging waste is a dominant contributor in today's world and responsible for half of the waste in the globe. [4] The recycling rate in 2015 for containers and packaging was 53 percent. Furthermore, the process of burning of containers and packaging was 7.2 million tons (21.4 percent of total combustion with energy recovery).
The trade in plastic waste from industrialized countries to developing countries has been identified as the main cause of marine litter because countries importing the waste plastics often lack the capacity to process all the material. [249] Therefore, the United Nations has imposed a ban on waste plastic trade unless it meets certain criteria.
Researchers collected a total of 3070 samples across the world to identify hot spots of surface level plastic pollution. The pattern of distribution closely mirrored models of oceanic currents with the North Pacific Gyre, or Great Pacific Garbage Patch , being the highest density of plastic accumulation.
From the start of plastic production through to 2015, the world produced around 6.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste, only 9% of which has been recycled and only ~1% has been recycled more than once. [28] Of the remaining waste, 12% was incinerated and 79% was either sent to landfills or lost to the environment as pollution. [28]
The world's first fully synthetic plastic was Bakelite, invented in New York in 1907, by Leo Baekeland, [7] who coined the term "plastics". [8] Dozens of different types of plastics are produced today, such as polyethylene , which is widely used in product packaging , and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), used in construction and pipes because of its ...
The plastisphere is a human-made ecosystem consisting of organisms able to live on plastic waste. Plastic marine debris, most notably microplastics, accumulates in aquatic environments and serves as a habitat for various types of microorganisms, including bacteria and fungi.