A new study finds that every year people create 57 million tons of plastic pollution. The material winds up everywhere from the deepest oceans to the highest peak of Mount Everest to inside people's body.

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.

  • girlfreddy@lemmy.caOPEnglish
    41·
    3 months ago

    Honestly I wish journalists would quit blaming ‘the world’ for stuff like this. It’s not ‘the world’ making all the plastic … it’s big oil and big companies that are.

    • Mr_Blott@feddit.ukEnglish
      12·
      3 months ago

      You vote with your wallet. The Give-me-convenience-or-give-me-death cunts leave a trail of disposable contact lenses, toothpicks, dental floss sticks and single use kid’s toys all around the beautiful European mountain area I live in.

      It’s just pure fucking selfishness and it’s getting worse

      • Dkarma@lemmy.worldEnglish
        17·
        3 months ago

        You vote for the only options u have. Everyone is making this shit. No one is making bio plastics. You don’t have the option to not buy a lot of the plastics you consume.

        • girlfreddy@lemmy.caOPEnglish
          8·
          3 months ago

          Yup. A while back I remember reading that Germany had a system in place that rated manufacturers’ packaging based on recycling - the more unrecyclable/mixed media the packaging was, the higher the import fees/sale taxes…

          Dunno if it’s still like that, but it seems the most logical way to place the costs of plastic pollution where it belongs … on the manufacturers.

        • Mr_Blott@feddit.ukEnglish
          4·
          3 months ago

          You have the option NOT to use anything I mentioned, but people do because of the “One snowflake never felt responsible for an avalanche” effect

          • copd@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            2 months ago

            The downvotes on your comments are only proving your point. People want others to reform but not themselves

            The only valid excuse for not changing your lifestyle is if you cant afford to.

        • copd@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          Brash statement.

          Some countries/areas offer options to avoid buying the vast majority of plastics. The problem is that its almost always more expensive to purchase the plastic free alternative.

          When money is involved its pretty obvious what happens and what people pick

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        3 months ago

        You vote with your wallet.

        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.