6.3bn tons of plastic rubbish

PLASTIC weighing the equivalent of 1 billion elephants has been created since the Fifties, and most of it has ended up in landfill, a study has shown.

Researchers from the University of Georgia and the University of California found that by 2015, humans had generated 8.3billion tons of plastic, of which 6.3 billion tons had become waste. Only nine per cent was recycled, 12 per cent was incinerated and 79 per cent had accumulated in landfill or the natural environment. If current trends continue, roughly 12 billion tons of plastic waste will be in landfills or polluting oceans by 2050.

Global production of plastics increased annually from 2million tons in 1950 to over 400million tons in 2015, outgrowing most man-made materials. Only steel and cement are more ubiquitous, but unlike the building materials, which last decades, most plastic is quickly discarded. Figures from Recycle Now show that Britain bins about 16million plastic bottles a day.