Plastic Pollution
Plastic production has sharply increased over the last 70 years. In 1950, the world produced just two million tonnes. It now produces over 450 million tonnes.
Plastic has added much value to our lives: it’s a cheap, versatile, and sterile material used in various applications, including construction, home appliances, medical instruments, and food packaging.
However, when plastic waste is mismanaged – not recycled, incinerated, or kept in sealed landfills – it becomes an environmental pollutant. One to two million tonnes of plastic enter our oceans yearly, affecting wildlife and ecosystems.
Improving the management of plastic waste across the world – especially in poorer countries, where most of the ocean plastics come from – is therefore critical to tackling this problem.
On this page, you can find all of our data, visualizations, and writing on plastic pollution.
You can also find a summary of this material in our slide deck.
Research & Writing
How much plastic waste ends up in the ocean?
Around 0.5% of plastic waste ends up in the ocean. Most of it stays close to the shoreline.
Where does the plastic in our oceans come from?
Which countries and rivers emit the most plastic to the ocean? What does this mean for solutions to tackle plastic pollution?
Ocean plastics: How much do rich countries contribute by shipping their waste overseas?
Many countries ship plastic waste overseas. How much of the world’s waste is traded, and how big is its role in the pollution of our oceans?
More Key Articles on Plastic Pollution
Endnotes
OECD (2022), Global Plastics Outlook: Economic Drivers, Environmental Impacts and Policy Options, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/de747aef-en.
Meijer, L. J., Van Emmerik, T., Van Der Ent, R., Schmidt, C., & Lebreton, L. (2021). More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean. Science Advances, 7(18), eaaz5803.
OECD (2022), Global Plastics Outlook: Economic Drivers, Environmental Impacts and Policy Options, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/de747aef-en.
Meijer, L. J., Van Emmerik, T., Van Der Ent, R., Schmidt, C., & Lebreton, L. (2021). More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean. Science Advances, 7(18), eaaz5803.
But this was not always the case: richer countries have been polluting the oceans for longer periods. If we look at accumulated stocks of plastics in the ocean, higher-income countries across Europe and North America play a larger role than they do today.
Meijer, L. J., Van Emmerik, T., Van Der Ent, R., Schmidt, C., & Lebreton, L. (2021). More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean. Science Advances, 7(18).
Lebreton, L. C., Van der Zwet, J., Damsteeg, J. W., Slat, B., Andrady, A., & Reisser, J. (2017). River plastic emissions to the world’s oceans. Nature Communications, 8, 15611.
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Our articles and data visualizations rely on work from many different people and organizations. When citing this topic page, please also cite the underlying data sources. This topic page can be cited as:
Hannah Ritchie, Veronika Samborska and Max Roser (2023) - “Plastic Pollution” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution' [Online Resource]
BibTeX citation
@article{owid-plastic-pollution,
author = {Hannah Ritchie and Veronika Samborska and Max Roser},
title = {Plastic Pollution},
journal = {Our World in Data},
year = {2023},
note = {https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution}
}
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