The world creates 57 million tons of plastic pollution every year, spreading from the deepest oceans to the highest mountain peaks and into people’s bodies, according to a new study. More than two-thirds of it comes from the Global South.
It’s enough pollution each year — about 52 million tons — to fill New York City’s Central Park with plastic waste as tall as the Empire State Building, according to researchers from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. They examined waste generated locally in more than 50,000 cities and towns around the world for a study in Wednesday’s issue of the journal Nature.
The study looked at plastic that ends up in the open environment, not plastic that ends up in landfills or is properly incinerated. Governments fail to collect and process waste for 15 percent of the world’s population, the study authors said — a major reason why 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 professor of environmental engineering at Leeds. The other cities with the most plastic pollution were New Delhi; Luanda, Angola; Karachi, Pakistan; and Al Qahirah, Egypt.
India leads the world in generating plastic waste, producing 10.2 million tons per year (9.3 million metric tons), more than double the next largest polluters, Nigeria and Indonesia. China, often vilified for pollution, comes in fourth but is making huge strides in reducing waste, Velis said. Other major plastic polluters include Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia and Brazil. Those eight countries account for more than half of the world’s plastic pollution, according to the study’s data.
According to the study, the United States ranks 90th in plastic pollution with more than 52,500 tons (47,600 metric tons) and the United Kingdom ranks 135th with nearly 5,100 tons (4,600 metric tons).
In 2022, most countries in the world agreed to conclude the first legally binding treaty on plastic pollution, including in the oceans. The final negotiations on the treaty will take place in South Korea in November.
The study used artificial intelligence to zero in on plastics that were either improperly incinerated — about 57 percent of the pollution — or simply dumped. In both cases, these are incredibly small microplastics, or nanoplastics, that are turning the problem from a visual nuisance on beaches and a problem for marine life into a threat to human health, Velis said.
Several studies have been conducted this year on the prevalence of microplastics in our drinking water and in human tissues such as hearts, brains and testicles. However, doctors and scientists are still not entirely sure what the dangers to human health are.
“The big time bomb of microplastics are these microplastics that are being released primarily in the Global South,” Velis said. “We already have a huge dispersal problem. They are in the most remote places … the peaks of Everest, in the Mariana Trench in the ocean, in what we breathe and what we eat and what we drink.”
He called it “everyone’s problem” and one that will haunt future generations.
“We should not be blaming the Global South, any blame,” Velis said. “And we should not be praising ourselves in any way for what we do in the Global North.”
According to Velis, there is simply a lack of resources and the government’s ability to provide the necessary services to citizens.
Outside experts worry that the study’s focus on pollution, rather than overall production, is giving the plastics industry a pass. Making plastics releases large amounts of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.
“These guys have defined plastic pollution much more narrowly, as really just macroplastics that end up in the environment after the consumer, and there’s a risk that we lose focus on the upstream and say, hey, now all we have to do is manage the waste better,” said Neil Tangri, senior director of science and policy at GAIA, a global network of advocacy organizations working on zero waste and environmental justice initiatives. “It’s necessary, but it’s not the whole story.”
Theresa Karlsson, scientific and technical advisor to the International Pollutants Elimination Network, another coalition of environmental, health and waste advocacy groups, called the scale of pollution identified by the study “alarming” and said it shows that the amount of plastic being produced today is “out of control.”
But she said the study misses the point about the global trade in plastic waste, with rich countries sending it to poor countries. The study said the trade in plastic waste is declining, with China banning imports of the waste. But Karlsson said the overall trade in waste is actually increasing, and likely plastics too. She cited EU waste exports as having risen from 110,000 tonnes (100,000 metric tons) in 2004 to 1.4 million tonnes (1.3 million metric tons) in 2021.
Velis said the amount of traded plastic waste is small. Kara Lavender Law, an oceanography professor at the Sea Education Association who was not involved in the study, agreed, based on U.S. plastic waste trends. She said this was also one of the more comprehensive studies on plastic waste.
Officials in the plastics industry praised the research.
“This study underscores that uncollected and unmanaged plastic waste is the single largest contributor to plastic pollution and that prioritizing adequate waste management is critical to ending plastic pollution,” Chris Jahn, council secretary of the International Council on Chemical Associations, said in a statement. In treaty negotiations, industry opposes a cap on plastic production.
The United Nations predicts that plastic production is likely to rise from about 440 million tons (400 million metric tons) per year to more than 1,200 million tons (1,100 million metric tons), saying “our planet is choking on plastic.”
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Jennifer McDermott contributed from Providence, Rhode Island.
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Follow Seth Borenstein on X on @borenbears
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