Only 9.5 % of the plastic materials produced worldwide in 2022 were manufactured with recycled materialsaccording to data analyzed by the Quanyin University Tsinghua (China).
The findings, published in ‘Communications Earth & Environment’, are part of an exhaustive analysis of the global plastic sector, which also reveals a great increase in the amount of plastic that is discarded by incineration and substantial regional differences in plastic consumption.
Plastic production has increased from two million tons per year by 1950 to 400 million tons per year in 2022, and it is projected that it reaches 800 million tons annually by 2050. Consequently, plastic pollution is a world -pressing and growing world problem, which raises important challenges for the environment, economy and public health. However, there is currently little exhaustive analysis of the global contemporary plastic sector.
Quanyin Tan and his colleagues conducted an analysis of the world plastic sector in 2022. For this, they used data from national statistics, sector reports and international databases to prepare a detailed panorama, both worldwide and regional, of the production, use and elimination of plastic.
The data of your analysis highlights the key trends in the world plastic supply chain. Of the 400 million tons of plastic produced during the year, just under 38 million (9.5 %) occurred from recycled plastic. 98 % of the remaining 362 million tons occurred from fossil fuels, mainly coal and oil.
Around 268 million tons of plastic were discarded during the year, with only 27.9% sent for classification and possible recycling: 36.2% were sent directly to the landfill and 22.2% were sent directly to the incineration. In addition, only half of the classified plastic was really recycled, with 41% of the plastic classified in its incinerated place and 8.4% sent to the landfill.
However, the total percentage of global plastic waste sent to the landfill in 2022 (40%) has still decreased significantly compared to the estimated 79% of all global plastic waste sent to the landfill between 1950 and 2015. The United States had the highest consumption of per capita plastic, with an average of 216 kilos of plastic consumed per person per year, while China consumed the largest amount of plastic in general: 80 million tons per year.