Too much plastic, too quickly.

There is a lot of plastic!

• Humans have manufactured about 10 billion tons of plastic since 1950, most of which is still with us today.

• Half of all plastic in existence today was manufactured in the last 20 years. A great deal of it was packaging.

  • 42% of the plastic currently under production is packaging.

  • Most plastic packaging is used for between 5 minutes and 1 year, at which point it becomes trash.

• Most plastic cannot be recycled. The rest probably will not be recycled.

  • Over 16,000 chemicals can be used in the manufacture of plastic, making most of it too diverse to melt and refashion.

  • Only 9% of plastic worldwide has ever been recycled.

  • In the United States, only 5-6% of plastic is recycled.

• The plastics industry is on track to triple production by 2060, pivoting from fossil fuel to plastic goods to maintain market share.

Facts sourced from https://www.beyondplastics.org/learn