By year 2050 plastics manufacturing and processing may account for as much as 20% of petroleum consumed globally and 15% of the annual carbon emissions budget (World Economic Forum, 2016). The demand on fossil fuel, energy, as well as the associated carbon emissions by the industry, will increase as the future consumer demand for plastics increases. About 4% of fossil-fuel extracted annually is presently used as raw materials for plastics (British Plastics Federation, 2008) and it is the natural gas liquid fraction or low-value gaseous fraction from petroleum refining that is mostly used to make plastics.
Plastics production is energy intensive with resins having an embodied energy of 62–108 MJ kg −1 (inclusive of feedstock energy) much higher than for paper, wood, glass or metals (except for Aluminium) (Hammond and Jones, 2008). This impressive success of plastics is unparalleled by any competing materials used in packaging or construction, the two major applications areas of plastics. At the present rate of growth, plastics production is estimated to double within the next 20 years. Including the resin used in spinning textile fibres (Lenzing Group, 2016), this figure is closer to 393 Mt, a value that interestingly matches the global human biomass. Using our projections, we also demonstrate that the majority of MPW (91%) are transported via watersheds larger than 100 km 2 suggesting that rivers are major pathways for plastic litter to the ocean.Ĭommercial production of plastics that started around 1950’s has enjoyed exceptional growth, to reach the present global annual production of 330 million metric tonnes (Mt) for 2016 (Plastics Europe, 2017). However, we show that this growth in plastic waste can be reduced if developing economies significantly invest in waste management infrastructures as their GDP grows in the future and if efforts are made internationally to reduce the fraction of plastic in municipal solid waste. The future MPW load will continue to be disproportionately high in African and Asian continents even in the future years. In a business-as-usual scenario, this figure could triple to 155–265 Mt y −1 by 2060. We estimated between 60 and 99 million metric tonnes (Mt) of MPW were produced globally in 2015. In this study, using country-level data on waste management combined with high-resolution distributions and long-term projections of population and the gross domestic product (GDP), we present projections of global MPW generation at ~1 km resolution from now to 2060.
Knowing with precision where litter is generated is important to target priority areas for the implementation of mitigation policies.
The accumulation of mismanaged plastic waste (MPW) in the environment is a global growing concern.
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