The United States’ contribution of plastic waste to land and ocean

RESEARCH ARTICLE ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

The United States’ contribution of plastic waste to land and ocean

1. View ORCID ProfileKara Lavender Law1,*,

2. View ORCID ProfileNatalie Starr2,

3. View ORCID ProfileTheodore R. Siegler2,

4. View ORCID ProfileJenna R. Jambeck3,4,

5. View ORCID ProfileNicholas J. Mallos5 and

6. View ORCID ProfileGeorge H. Leonard5

Science Advances 30 Oct 2020:
Vol. 6, no. 44, eabd0288
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abd0288

Plastic waste affects environmental quality and ecosystem health. In 2010, an estimated 5 to 13 million metric tons (Mt) of plastic waste entered the ocean from both developing countries with insufficient solid waste infrastructure and high-income countries with very high waste generation. We demonstrate that, in 2016, the United States generated the largest amount of plastic waste of any country in the world (42.0 Mt). Between 0.14 and 0.41 Mt of this waste was illegally dumped in the United States, and 0.15 to 0.99 Mt was inadequately managed in countries that imported materials collected in the United States for recycling. Accounting for these contributions, the amount of plastic waste generated in the United States estimated to enter the coastal environment in 2016 was up to five times larger than that estimated for 2010, rendering the United States’ contribution among the highest in the world.

INTRODUCTION

Plastic waste contaminates all major ecosystems on the planet, with concern increasing about its potential impacts on wildlife and human health, as smaller and more widespread plastic particles are identified in both the natural (1–4) and built (5–7) environment. For decades, scientists have documented plastic debris in the ocean (8). Marine sources of ocean pollutants were addressed in the 1970s (9) and 1980s (10), before the focus turned to land as the purported, yet poorly substantiated, source of 80% of marine debris. In 2015, Jambeck et al. (11) used global solid waste management data compiled by the World Bank (12) to estimate the amount of inadequately managed plastic waste generated within 50 km of the coastline that entered the global ocean in 2010 [4.8 to 12.7 million metric tons (Mt)]. Since then, a nominal value of 8 Mt has been broadly adopted as a quantitative benchmark of the annual scale of ocean plastic pollution, spurring responses by nongovernmental organizations, policy-makers, and the plastics and consumer products industries. Stemming from this analysis, many remediation efforts have focused on countries in South and Southeast Asia (13–15).

However, high-income countries such as the United States and members of the European Union (EU-28) also had large plastic emissions to the ocean in 2010, according to Jambeck et al. (hereafter “2010 analysis”). Despite having robust waste management systems, the large coastal populations and very high per capita waste generation rates in these high-income countries together resulted in large amounts of mismanaged waste due only to litter (estimated 2% of waste generation) that is available to enter the ocean. According to the 2010 analysis, the U.S. coastal population generated the highest mass of plastic waste of any country (13.8 Mt, 112.9 million people), whereas coastal populations in EU-28 countries collectively produced even more plastic waste (14.8 Mt, 187.3 million people). The next highest country in coastal plastic waste generation was China (11.6 Mt per day, 262.9 million people).

See Full Article at Source: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/44/eabd0288