More than 9.1 billion tons of plastic has been produced since the 1950s and most of it has made Earth its permanent home.
A new global study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances reveals the first attempt made by researchers to measure the total amount of plastic on earth since the beginning of its mass production.
Out of the 9.1 billion tons made, roughly 7 billion tons are no longer being used, according to the study. That’s about one ton of plastic for every living man, woman and child on Earth.
Despite this being a major problem, plastic production continues to accelerate. In 2015, the world produced 448 million tons of plastic — or more than double the amount made in 1998.
The team of researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of Georgia and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, claim that plastics such as Bakelite were used in the early 20th century. The material quickly gained popularity after World War II, and soon enough, plastic became one of the most commonly used man-made materials.
Now, plastics are used everywhere. They are used in packaging, such as plastic water bottles, and even in consumer goods, such as cellphones and refrigerators. Plastics can even be found in cars and clothing, in the form of polyester.
“The growth of plastics production in the past 65 years has substantially outpaced any other manufactured material,” according to the report.
Plastics are unable to break down like other man-made materials. Because of this, roughly three-quarters of it ends up as waste in landfills, littered across the land or polluting waters around the globe.
“At the current rate, we are really heading toward a plastic planet,” the study lead author Roland Geyer, an industrial ecologist at the University of California, said. “It is something we need to pay attention to.”
Study co-author Jenna Jambeck of the University of Georgia believes the world first needs to know the amount of plastic that covers the earth before the problem can be tackled.
The report claims that “without a well-designed and tailor-made management strategy for end-of-life plastics, humans are conducting a singular uncontrolled experiment on a global scale, in which billions of metric tons of material will accumulate across all major terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems on the planet.”
