The world creates 57 million tonnes of plastic pollution every year, spreading it from the deepest oceans to the highest mountain peaks and inside people’s bodies, according to a new study that also indicates that more than two-thirds of this pollution comes from the Global South.
The pollution generated each year — about 52 million tons — could fill New York City’s Central Park with plastic waste as tall as the Empire State Building, according to researchers at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. They looked at local waste in more than 50,000 cities and towns around the world for a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The study looked at plastic that ends up in the environment, not what goes to landfills or is burned properly. For 15% of the world’s population, governments are failing to collect and dispose of waste, according to the study’s authors. That’s a major reason why Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa produce the most plastic waste. That includes 255 million people in India, the study found.
According to the study’s author, Costas Velis, professor of environmental engineering at Leeds, Lagos, Nigeria, has the highest plastic pollution. Other cities with the highest plastic pollution are New Delhi, Luanda, Angola, Karachi, Pakistan and Al Qahirah, Egypt.
India leads the world in producing 10.2 million tons of plastic per year, well over double the next biggest polluters, Nigeria and Indonesia. China, often blamed for pollution, ranks fourth but is making huge strides in reducing waste, Velis said. The other top polluters are Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia and Brazil. Those eight countries are responsible for more than half of the world’s plastic pollution, according to the study’s data.
The United States ranks 90th in plastic pollution with more than 52,500 tonnes and the United Kingdom ranks 135th with nearly 5,100 tonnes, according to the study.
In 2022, most of the world’s nations agreed to develop the first legally binding treaty on plastic pollution, including in the oceans. Final negotiations on the treaty will take place in South Korea in November.
The study used artificial intelligence to focus on plastics that were either improperly burned (about 57% of the pollution) or simply dumped. In both cases, they are incredibly tiny microplastics, or nanoplastics, that transform the problem from an eyesore on beaches and a marine life issue to a threat to human health, Velis said.
Several studies this year have looked at the prevalence of microplastics in our drinking water and in human tissues, such as the heart, brain and testicles. Doctors and scientists still don’t know exactly what this means in terms of threats to human health.
“The time bomb of microplastics is mostly microplastics released in the Global South,” Velis said. “We already have a huge problem with their dispersal. They’re in the most remote places… the peaks of Everest, in the Mariana Trench, in the ocean, in what we breathe, in what we eat, in what we drink.”
He said it was a “problem that affects everyone” and will haunt future generations.
“We should not place any blame on the countries of the South,” Velis said. “And we should not boast about what we are doing in the countries of the North.”
It’s simply a lack of resources and capacity of the government to provide the necessary services to citizens, Velis said.
Outside experts worry that the study focuses on pollution rather than overall production, allowing the plastics industry to shirk its responsibilities. Plastic manufacturing emits large amounts of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.
“These people have defined plastic pollution in a much narrower way, as macroplastics released into the environment after the consumer, which risks losing sight of the upstream and telling us that all we need to do is manage waste better,” said Neil Tangri, senior director of science and policy at GAIA, a global network of advocacy organizations working on initiatives to eliminate waste and promote environmental justice. “That’s necessary, but it’s not the whole story.”
Theresa Karlsson, a science and technical adviser to the International Pollutants Elimination Network, another coalition of environmental, health and waste advocacy groups, called the volume of pollution identified by the study “alarming” and said it shows that the amount of plastic produced today is “unmanageable.”
But she said the study ignores the importance of the global trade in plastic waste, which is increasingly being felt in rich countries. The study says the trade in plastic waste is declining as China bans imports of waste. But Karlsson said the overall trade in waste is growing and likely the plastic trade is growing with it. She cited EU waste exports, which rose from 110,000 tonnes in 2004 to 1.4 million tonnes in 2021.
Velis said the amount of plastic waste in commerce is small. Kara Lavender Law, a professor of oceanography at the Sea Education Association who was not involved in the study, agreed, based on trends in plastic waste in the United States. She said it was also one of the most comprehensive studies of plastic waste.
Plastics industry officials welcomed the study.
“This study highlights that uncollected and unmanaged plastic waste is the primary contributor to plastic pollution and that prioritizing proper waste management is critical to ending plastic pollution,” Chris Jahn, secretary of the International Council of Chemical Associations, said in a statement. Industry is opposing limits on plastic production in the treaty negotiations.
The United Nations predicts that plastic production will likely increase from around 440 million tonnes per year to more than 1,200 million tonnes, saying that “our planet is choking on plastic.”
