Observation # 5: – Our Plastic Planet
Arthur Woods / 25/07/2017
This is my Geo-Political Observation for July 25, 2017.
Looking over the constant data stream coming in from the GEO-Political Observatory, not everything has to do with the political back-and-forth of international politics. The data that is coming in falls into many categories and you can view these individual categories by clicking on the appropriate button.
Today, I was examining the "environment" data stream as this effects the well being and health of all life on Earth and I noticed this article in the Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger.
The German title is : "1000 Kilo pro Mensch - die Erde wird zum Plastik-Planeten".
If you don't speak German - with the Google translate plug-in you can instantly translate the page into English - or I assume your own native language. The English translation is pretty good.
In English the title reads:
"1000 kilos per person - the earth becomes a plastic planet". I think you will agree this is not what we all want.
The original research paper about the amount of plastic in the world with the title " Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made" was published by three US scientists
Roland Geyer - Jenna R. Jambeck - and Kara Lavender Law in the magazine "Science Advances"
Links to this article and the Swiss newspaper article are in the
show notes below.
The scientists report that between 1950 and 2015 approximately 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic has been produced.
It was in the 1950's - after World War 2 - that the widespread use of plastics outside of the military began.
As the tile states: this works out to about 1 ton per capita of the world's population. And half of this plastic was produced over the last 13 years.
But the most striking fact: of these over 8 billion tons, only about 2.5 billion tons or 30 percent is currently being used.
The rest - some 6.3 billion tons - is plastic waste that still exists in some form or other on the planet.
The study authors state that with this plastic, a country of the size of Argentina could be filled.
But it gets worse.
According to the study, only the smallest part of the unused plastic - 600 million tons or 9 percent - has been recycled worldwide.
AND, they have found that 90 percent of the recycled plastic has only been recycled once.
The vast majority of the plastic waste - 4.9 billion tonnes or 60 percent of the plastic that has ever been produced - is stored in a controlled or uncontrolled manner somewhere on the earth or in the sea.
Over the years, sun radiation causes the material to decompose into "microparticles" that are in the millimeter or micron range.
The effects of these "microparticles" floating in the sea - especially as they gradually enter the human food chain - and this is attracting more scientific research worldwide.
However, the long-term consequences for of our soils, which can result from long-term plastic deposits, have not yet been investigated.
If current production and waste management trends continue, by 2050, roughly 12 billion tons of plastic waste will be in landfills or elsewhere in the natural environment.
Solutions to humanity's reliance on fossil fuels and how these are impacting all aspects of the environment is definitely "Food for Thought".
Show notes:
Tages-Anzeider Article -1000 kilos per person - the earth becomes a plastic planet
Science Advances - Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made
