Since humans began making it in the 1950s, some 8.3 billion metric tons of plastics are in the United States. The problem is, it’s not going anywhere. Almost 80 percent of even the original plastic is filling up space in landfills around the country.
“Most plastics don’t biodegrade in any meaningful sense, so the plastic waste humans have generated could be with us for hundreds or even thousands of years,” said Jenna Jambeck, co-author of a study recently published in the journal Science Advances. She was quoted in ScienceDaily, an internet science news website.
The study was done by a team of scientists from the University of Georgia, the University of California-Santa Barbara, and the Sea Education Association.
While plastic is one of the most widespread and useful inventions of the last century, much of it is discarded shortly after use and takes a long time to go away.
Plastics’ largest market is for packaging and those products are used once and then discarded, the study notes.
“Half of all plastics become waste after four fewer years,” said Roland Geyer, lead author of the paper and an associate professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara.
There are areas where plastics are indispensable, especially in products designed for durability. But I think we need to take a careful look at our expansive use of plastics and ask when the use of these materials does or does not make sense,” said Kara Lavender Law, a research professor at the Sea Education Association.
The study found that only 9 percent of plastics produced since the early 1950s has been recycled, 12 percent incinerated and 79 percent sent to landfills.
Under current trends, roughly 12 billion metric tons of plastics will be in landfills or the natural environment by 2050, the study projects. That’s about the weight of 35 Empire State Buildings.
The team of researchers is the same that in a 2015 study estimated that 8 million tons of waste produced in the year 2010 entered the world’s ocean.
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