The world produces approximately 460 million tonnes of plastic every year — roughly 230 times the amount produced in 1950 — and only about 9 percent of all plastic ever made has been recycled, with the remainder either burned, sent to landfills, or quietly accumulating in the environment, where researchers are now finding microplastic particles in human blood, brain tissue, and the placentas of newborns.

Global plastic production in 1950, when large-scale industrial manufacture of polymer resins and synthetic fibres had just begun, was approximately 2 million tonnes. Global plastic production in 2019 was approximately 460 million tonnes. The ratio is about 230 to 1. In seven decades, plastic has gone from being a specialty material made in modest quantities [...] The post The world produces approximately 460 million tonnes of plastic every year — roughly 230 times the amount produced in 1950 — a