Plastic use and waste on track to triple by 2060

A world severely blighted by plastic pollution is on track to see the use of plastics nearly triple in less than four decades, according to findings released yesterday.

Annual production of fossil-fuel-based plastics are set to top 1.2 billion tonnes by 2060 and waste to exceed one billion tonnes, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Even with aggressive action to cut demand and improve efficiencies, plastic production would almost double in less than 40 years, the 38-nation body projects in a report.

Such globally coordinated policies, however, could hugely boost the share of future plastic waste that is recycled, from 12 to 40 percent.

Infiltrating the most remote and otherwise pristine regions of the planet, microplastics have been discovered inside fish in the deepest recesses of the ocean and locked inside Arctic ice.

Since the 1950s, roughly 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced with more than 60 percent of that tossed into landfills, burned or dumped directly into rivers and oceans.

Some 460 million tonnes of plastics were used in 2019, twice as much as 20 years earlier. The amount of plastic waste has also nearly doubled, exceeding 350 million tonnes, with less than 10 percent of it recycled.

On current trends, the use of plastics is projected to roughly double in North America, Europe, and East Asia. In other emerging and developing countries, it is expected to grow three- to five-fold, and more than six-fold in sub-Saharan Africa.