A data-driven look at plastic waste & what we can do

We all agree that plastics are bad for the environment. But how much of that is plastic bags? What about straws, bottles, or packaging?

Plastic is everywhere.

The amazing Our World in Data site on plastic pollution tells us that globally, 270 million tonnes of primary (new) plastic is produced per year.

Annual plastic productions, compared with an assortment of heavy objects.

So, 740 Empire State Buildings’, or 10,000 Titanics’ worth of new plastic is produced every year.

The above graph measures mass. If we were to measure by volume, the number goes up even more, because plastic is less dense than most other materials. The same mass of plastic might be 2.5 times as large, or 7 times as large, as the equivalent mass of aluminium or steel, respectively.

Along with all of that plastic comes plastic waste. Which is in many ways far more harmful than other types of waste.

Why is it bad?

I’m sure you’ve heard all about why plastic is bad. It disrupts ecosystems, gets into our food chain (and ultimately into our bodies), and even affects carbon emissions, all the while having basically taking for ever to break down into its constituent parts.

There’s been far better minds than me who’s put together information on why plastics are bad. So, instead of poorly summarising that information, here are links to a couple of amazing articles:

Instead, I wanted to discuss some data points around it so we could understand what adds up all the plastics.

So where does it all go?

You are probably familiar with the fact that much of that ends up in the ocean, some of it floating on the ocean surface to form the “Great Pacific garbage patch”, which was estimated to include about 80,000 tonnes of plastic. Still, that’s a drop in the ocean (sorry) compared to the 270,000,000 tonnes that are produced every year.

The majority of plastic waste goes to landfill or is discarded.

From Our World In Data

This is a major reason for the campaign to “reduce, recycle, reuse”, particularly with regards to plastics waste.

Who uses all of this plastic?

Well, it turns out that packaging is the most significant source of plastic use. Just take a look at this graph below:

Plastic Consumption by Industry (data from National Geographic)

Over 160 tonnes of plastic is consumed by the packaging industry annually. That would include packaging used in everything that we purchase; from groceries, furniture, electronics, accessories… everything.

If that seems too vague, and leaves you wondering, here are a few more data points:

Britain’s leading supermarkets create more than 800,000 tonnes of plastic packaging waste every year (source). That’s 13kg per EVERY person in Britain, even though obviously not everybody is going to be customers of “leading supermarkets”. You might not see it directly, but a lot of plastic is used to get the products to you.

(source). That’s 13kg per EVERY person in Britain, even though obviously not everybody is going to be customers of “leading supermarkets”. You might not see it directly, but a lot of plastic is used to get the products to you. 170 kg of packaging waste was generated per inhabitant in Europe in 2015 (source), about 31kg of which is plastic.

(source), about 31kg of which is plastic. Australia (my home country) only recycles about 1/3 of packaging waste in 2019 (source).

Packaging is especially insidious, because it is by nature disposable, and has a very short lifecycle of about 6 months. So, all of that plastic almost immediately becomes waste within 6 months, unlike say plastic that goes into the building or construction industry, where on average they might be used for decades before turning into waste.

How can we do better?

It’s easy to find some examples of ways to contribute. Any cursory Internet search throws up articles like “Change the way you live — Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” (WWF), “9 Life Hacks To Help You Break Up With Plastic” (Huffington Post), “8 simple ways to reduce your plastic use” (NBC News).

These are definitely helpful. I have a metal straw, and basically don’t buy plastic bottles now. And I have a reusable coffee cup, and try to minimise takeaway / delivery dinners.

But, what wasn’t clear (to me at least) is the impact of each of these changes or efforts. So I did a little research.

How much plastic is in these things anyway?

Breaking up with plastic bags, straws, coffee cups/lids, water bottles, cutlery and takeaway containers are probably the most common tips to consumers. Here are some examples:

Examples of common single-use items, by typical amounts of plastics content

Let’s take a look at how much plastics use that’d mean for us. A hypothetical plastic-heavy person might consume, in a week:

10 bags @ 5 grams = 25g

10 straws @ .5 grams = 5g

10 cups + lids @ 10 grams = 100g

5 sets of cutlery + takeaway containers @ 30 grams (10g+20g) = 150g

5 bottles @ 15 grams = 75g

1 laundry bag = 35g

That adds up to about 390g of plastic per week, in what I think is a pretty wasteful day. At this rate, this person would generate 20kg of plastic waste in a year! It’s a lot, and we’d all be doing well to replace these with more sustainable options, for sure.

But, an average person in the US produces 340g of plastic waste per day. That’s 124kg/year!

Predictably, industrialised countries produce more plastic waste per capita (Our World in Data)

Much of the rest of it is in the supply chain for our goods! As discussed in the supermarket example above. So if we can reduce that, it’d be a huge win. To make a difference, companies like supermarkets should be pressurised by consumers to reduce plastic usage, beyond the very visible gesture of reducing plastic bag usage — which is great, but is only a very small part of the problem (remember, it’s only 5g per bag).

And then there’s recycling

The EU recycles over 2/3 of its plastic packaging waste, instead of Australia’s 1/3. Its recycling system is so broken that its largest recycling company has gone down under (sorry), and our recycling gets sent back home from overseas recycling plants because they are too contaminated.

This is rubbish. What are we doing?

There’s no money currently in recycling, and no political incentives to put money into it. At least in Australia, there isn’t. Either we should work on innovations (business or technological) to make it viable, or create political will so that governments are forced to put money into it.

The difference between recycling 1/3 and 2/3 of plastic packaging in the world would be 54 billion tonnes, by the way.

It actually gets worse when it comes to all plastics, where only 9% of plastics are recycled (source). In reality, out of 270 million tonnes a year, 2.4 million tonnes are recycled.

There are packaging companies developing new materials. In fact, many of them are ready to go and on the shelf. Given the prevalence of e-commerce sites, we should supporting these businesses, or pressuring companies like Amazon to use these, or at least offer them as options.

There are a tonne of things that we could be doing. And I think that we are at a point where we know enough to direct our efforts to those things where the end impact would be maximised.

I have definitely learned a lot doing research for this post, and I hope it’s useful to at least some of you out there.

I plan to write about various carbon emissions of activities in another post. Follow this blog if you’re interested! If there’s anything else you’d like me to write about, please do let me know in the comments.