Marine Litter Vital Graphics

DRIVERS

Modern times, marine litter

Today´s deterioration of the global environment is closely linked to unsustainable patterns of consumption and production. The exponential increase in production and consumption over the last 50 years has seen a rapid transformation of the relationship betweenhumans and thenatural world–more so than inanyother period inour history –with escalating use of natural resources leading to environmental degradation (UNEP, 2015). The increase in production and consumption is across all sectors and generates a vast amount of waste, much of it contributing to marine litter. This includes waste streams such as wood, textiles, metal, glass, ceramics, rubber and above all, plastic.

The rapid rise in the use of oil and gas during the last half century has been accompanied by the development of a range of petroleum products, some of which, like petrochemicals, have other important applications beyond energy production. The global production of petroleum-derived plastic has also increased dramatically, from 1.5 million tonnes in 1950 to more than 300 million tonnes in 2014 (Plastics Europe, 2015; Velis, 2014). Some people have described this dramatic increase in the use of plastics as the “Age of Plastics” (Stevens, 2002) or “Our

Plastic Age” (Thompson et al., 2009). If the current trend where production increases by approximately 5 per cent a year continues, another 33 billion tonnes of plastic will have accumulated around the planet by 2050 (Rochman et al., 2013). It is very easy to understand why the volume of global plastics production has already exceeded that of steel in the 1980s (Stevens, 2002). Plastics have a broad range of characteristics that make them a good replacement for

Plastic waste produced and mismanaged

Norway

Denmark

Sweden

Canada

Russian Federation

Finland

United Kingdom

EU 27 plus Norway

Netherlands

Poland Germany

Ireland

North Korea

Belgium France

Ukraine

Croatia

United States

Japan

Italy

Turkey

Spain

Syria

Greece

South Korea

Iran

Portugal

China

Lebanon

Cyprus

Pakistan

Tunisia

Israel

Morocco

Hong Kong

India

Taiwan

Kuwait

Cuba

Mexico

UAE

Algeria

Dominican Republic

Haiti

Libya

Bangladesh

Egypt

Saudi Arabia

Puerto Rico

Guatemala

Honduras

Myanmar

Oman

Trinidad and Tobago

Vietnam Philippines

Yemen

Nicaragua

El Salvador

Nigeria

Senegal

Thailand

Ghana

Venezuela

Costa Rica

Panama

Malaysia

Guyana

Sri Lanka

Somalia

Colombia

Cote d'Ivoire

Singapore

Ecuador

Papua New Guinea

Indonesia

Brazil

Peru

Angola

Mauritius

Australia

Chile

Uruguay

South Africa

Argentina

Coastal population

Plastic waste production Thousand tonnes per day, 2010

Million people

New Zealand

1 to 2 Less than 1 2 to 10 10 to 50 50 to 263 Land locked country

Total plastic waste produced

37

10 1 0,2

Source: Jambeck, J., R., et al., Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean, Science, 2015; Neumann B., et. al., Future Coastal Population Growth and Exposure to Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Flooding - A Global Assessment. PLoS ONE, 2015.

Portion of plastic waste mismanaged

10

Marine Litter Vital Graphics