Marine Litter Vital Graphics
DRIVERS
Modern times, marine litter
Today´s deterioration of the global environment is closely linked to unsustainable patterns of consumption and production. The exponential increase in production and consumption over the last 50 years has seen a rapid transformation of the relationship betweenhumans and thenatural world–more so than inanyother period inour history –with escalating use of natural resources leading to environmental degradation (UNEP, 2015). The increase in production and consumption is across all sectors and generates a vast amount of waste, much of it contributing to marine litter. This includes waste streams such as wood, textiles, metal, glass, ceramics, rubber and above all, plastic.
The rapid rise in the use of oil and gas during the last half century has been accompanied by the development of a range of petroleum products, some of which, like petrochemicals, have other important applications beyond energy production. The global production of petroleum-derived plastic has also increased dramatically, from 1.5 million tonnes in 1950 to more than 300 million tonnes in 2014 (Plastics Europe, 2015; Velis, 2014). Some people have described this dramatic increase in the use of plastics as the “Age of Plastics” (Stevens, 2002) or “Our
Plastic Age” (Thompson et al., 2009). If the current trend where production increases by approximately 5 per cent a year continues, another 33 billion tonnes of plastic will have accumulated around the planet by 2050 (Rochman et al., 2013). It is very easy to understand why the volume of global plastics production has already exceeded that of steel in the 1980s (Stevens, 2002). Plastics have a broad range of characteristics that make them a good replacement for
Plastic waste produced and mismanaged
Norway
Denmark
Sweden
Canada
Russian Federation
Finland
United Kingdom
EU 27 plus Norway
Netherlands
Poland Germany
Ireland
North Korea
Belgium France
Ukraine
Croatia
United States
Japan
Italy
Turkey
Spain
Syria
Greece
South Korea
Iran
Portugal
China
Lebanon
Cyprus
Pakistan
Tunisia
Israel
Morocco
Hong Kong
India
Taiwan
Kuwait
Cuba
Mexico
UAE
Algeria
Dominican Republic
Haiti
Libya
Bangladesh
Egypt
Saudi Arabia
Puerto Rico
Guatemala
Honduras
Myanmar
Oman
Trinidad and Tobago
Vietnam Philippines
Yemen
Nicaragua
El Salvador
Nigeria
Senegal
Thailand
Ghana
Venezuela
Costa Rica
Panama
Malaysia
Guyana
Sri Lanka
Somalia
Colombia
Cote d'Ivoire
Singapore
Ecuador
Papua New Guinea
Indonesia
Brazil
Peru
Angola
Mauritius
Australia
Chile
Uruguay
South Africa
Argentina
Coastal population
Plastic waste production Thousand tonnes per day, 2010
Million people
New Zealand
1 to 2 Less than 1 2 to 10 10 to 50 50 to 263 Land locked country
Total plastic waste produced
37
10 1 0,2
Source: Jambeck, J., R., et al., Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean, Science, 2015; Neumann B., et. al., Future Coastal Population Growth and Exposure to Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Flooding - A Global Assessment. PLoS ONE, 2015.
Portion of plastic waste mismanaged
10
Marine Litter Vital Graphics
Made with FlippingBook