Plastic bottles surge as 1million sold per minute
THE avalanche of plastic bottles being dumped around the world will surge by 20 per cent in four years.
About a million are sold globally every minute – and this figure is predicted to leap – making it a problem as bad as climate change, campaigners warn.
Research by market intelligence firm Euromonitor International reveals that more than half a trillion bottles will be sold by the end of the decade, with the growth being fuelled by demand in Asia.
China is the worst offender, as it uses around one in four plastic bottles. Global use has surged from 300 billion sold a year a decade ago to 480 billion now.
By 2021 this will hit 583.8 billion a year, the report on global packaging trends says.
But as use of plastic bottles soars, efforts to collect and recycle them are failing to keep up.
Recycling rates for plastic are low. Fewer than half of the bottles bought in 2016 were recycled and just 7 per cent were turned into new bottles – with most plastic bottles ending up in tips or in the seas.
The Daily Mail has led calls for a deposit scheme as part of its Banish the Bottles campaign.
As well as affecting marine creatures and seabirds, microplastics are increasingly ending up in the human food chain in fish and shellfish.
Hugo Tagholm, of the marine conservation group Surfers Against Sewage, said the figures were devastating.
Speaking to the Guardian, he said: ‘The plastic pollution crisis rivals the threat of climate change as it pollutes every natural system and an increasing number of organisms.
‘Current science shows plastics cannot be usefully assimilated into the food chain. Where they are ingested they carry toxins that work their way on to our dinner plates.’
He added: ‘ While the production of throwaway plastics has grown dramatically over the last 20 years, the systems to contain, control, reuse and recycle them just haven’t kept pace.’
About 38.5 million plastic bottles are used in the UK every day – with just over half being recycled. More than 16 million are either incinerated, put in landfill or end up littering the land or seas.
Rosemarie Downey, head of packaging research at Euromonitor, said the surge was driven by people ‘living healthier’ lives by choosing bottled water over fizzy drinks.