Plastic usage for packaging has increased 20 times in past 50 years to 311 million tons in 2014, and is expected to doubled in 20 years
20 Januari 2016 18:46
Brilio.net/en - A report released by the World Economic Forum, Tuesday (19/1) indicates that the Earths ocean will turn into a hell of plastic. The report says, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050, as reported in VOA, Tuesday.
No wonder, plastic has become the most used material in the world, in every single day in the modern industry, with two advantages it offers: functionality and low production costs.
Plastic usage for packaging, which is the focus of the report, has increased 20 times in past 50 years to 311 million tons in 2014, and is expected to doubled in 20 years.
But sadly, the usage of plastic for packaging is considered a lost to the economy. It is because most plastic packaging is used only once, and 95 percent of its value (worth US$80 billion to US$120 billion annually) had been wasted.
With the current pace, the report predicts that the ocean will contain more plastic than fish by 2050 in terms of weight, and estimating that (by then) the amount of plastic produced globally will have increased three times to more than one billion tons.
Even more problematic fact revealed by the report: almost a third of all used plastic packaging escapes the recycling systems, and ends up as litters in nature, or clogging infrastructure.
The World Economic Forum shares a thought for worlds population, in which plastic never become waste, but is sistematically collected and recycled. That means offering people incentives to recycle plastic, use reusable packaging, and encourage countries to improve their waste collection and recycling facilities to prevent the materials scattered into nature.
The report is based on interviews with more than 180 experts and on analysis of more than 200 reports.
