Just one example from the U.N. report: Each year, consumers world-wide use an estimated 5 trillion plastic bags. That’s a rate of about 10 million per minute. If all of those bags were tied together, a year’s worth would wrap around the Earth seven times. In real-world terms, that 90.5 percent statistic adds up to about 6.3 trillion metric tons of plastic that has either been incinerated or dumped somewhere in the world. Plastic takes more than 400 years to degrade, so most of it still exists in some form. The vast majority—79 percent—is accumulating in landfills or sloughing off in the natural environment as litter. Meaning: at some point, much of it ends up in the oceans, the final sink. If present trends continue, by 2050, there will be 12 billion metric tons of plastic in landfills. That amount is 35,000 times as heavy as the Empire State Building. Credit: WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM
