The world is pumping out 57 million tons of plastic pollution a year

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The world creates 57 million tons of plastic pollution every year and spreads it from the deepest oceans to the highest mountaintop to the inside of people’s bodies, according to a new study that also said more than two-thirds of it comes from the Global South.

It’s enough pollution each year — about 52 million metric tons — to fill New York City’s Central Park with plastic waste as high as the Empire State Building, according to researchers at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. They examined waste produced on the local level at more than 50,000 cities and towns across the world for a study in Wednesday’s journal Nature.

The study examined plastic that goes into the open environment, not plastic that goes into landfills or is properly burned. For 15% of the world’s population, government fails to collect and dispose of waste, the study’s authors said — a big reason Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa produce the most plastic waste. That includes 255 million people in India, the study said.

Lagos, Nigeria, emitted the most plastic pollution of any city, according to study author Costas Velis, a Leeds environmental engineering professor. The other biggest plastic polluting cities are New Delhi; Luanda, Angola; Karachi, Pakistan and Al Qahirah, Egypt.

https://apnews.com/article/plastics-waste-pollution-oceans-global-south-dd9ce2a092c5d5826a3436d9f47764c7

[msongs]

1. as George says, it's the earth..wtih plastic nt

[Probatim]

2. And the companies who put it out tell consumers it's up to us to recycle - while they do nothing but pump it out

and tell us there's no value in recycled plastics.

[progree]

3. hearts, brains, and testicles

From another thread, from PBS -
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143301569

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/the-world-is-producing-57-million-tons-of-plastic-pollution-per-year-new-study-finds

. . . Several studies this year have looked at how prevalent microplastics are in our drinking water and in people’s tissue, such as hearts, brains (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11100893/ ) and testicles ( https://academic.oup.com/toxsci/article-abstract/200/2/235/7673133 ), with doctors and scientists still not quite sure what it means in terms of human health threats.

. . . The United Nations projects that plastics production is likely to rise from about 440 million tons (400 million metric tons) a year to more than 1,200 million tons (1,100 million metric tons ((by 2050, according to the link -progree)), saying “our planet is choking in plastic.”

In the latest (Sept 6) issue of The Week, there is a blurb about the situation in U.S. as far as plastics in the brain. In part:

The 2024 samples had 50% greater microplastics weight than the samples from 2016. . . . 24 of 91 brains sampled had so much plastic that it constituted about 0.5% of the brain by weight