Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made

Abstract

Plastics have outgrown most man-made materials and have long been under environmental scrutiny. However, robust global information, particularly about their end-of-life fate, is lacking. By identifying and synthesizing dispersed data on production, use, and end-of-life management of polymer resins, synthetic fibers, and additives, we present the first global analysis of all mass-produced plastics ever manufactured. We estimate that 8300 million metric tons (Mt) as of virgin plastics have been produced to date. As of 2015, approximately 6300 Mt of plastic waste had been generated, around 9% of which had been recycled, 12% was incinerated, and 79% was accumulated in landfills or the natural environment. If current production and waste management trends continue, roughly 12,000 Mt of plastic waste will be in landfills or in the natural environment by 2050.

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Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made
Roland Geyer,
1
* Jenna R. Jambeck,
2
Kara Lavender Law
3
Plastics have outgrown most man-made materials and have long been under environmental scrutiny. However,
robust global information, particularly about their end-of-life fate, is lacking. By identifying and synthesizing dis-
persed data on production, use, and end-of-life management of polymer resins, synthetic fibers, and additives, we
present the first global analysis of all mass-produced plastics ever manufactured. We estimate that 8300 million
metric tons (Mt) as of virgin plastics have been produced to date. As of 2015, approximately 6300 Mt of plastic waste
had been generated, around 9% of which had been recycled, 12% was incinerated, and 79% was accumulated in land-
fills or the natural environment. If current production and waste management trends continue, roughly 12,000 Mt of
plastic waste will be in landfills or in the natural environment by 2050.
INTRODUCTION
A world without plastics, or synthetic organic polymers, seems un-
imaginable today, yet their large-scale production and use only dates
back to ~1950. Although the first synthetic plastics, such as Bakelite,
appeared in the early 20th century, widespread use of plastics outside
of the military did not occur until after World War II. The ensuing
rapid growth in plastics production is extraordinary, surpassing most
other man-made materials. Notable exceptions are materials that are
used extensively in the construction sector, such as steel and cement
(1,2).
Instead, plastics’largest market is packaging, an application whose
growth was accelerated by a global shift from reusable to single-use
containers. As a result, the share of plastics in municipal solid waste
(by mass) increased from less than 1% in 1960 to more than 10% by
2005 in middle- and high-income countries (3). At the same time,
global solid waste generation, which is strongly correlated with gross
national income per capita, has grown steadily over the past five dec-
ades (4,5).
The vast majority of monomers used to make plastics, such as eth-
ylene and propylene, are derived from fossil hydrocarbons.None of the
commonly used plastics are biodegradable. As a result, they accumu-
late, rather than decompose, i n landfills or the natural environment (6).
The only way to permanently eliminate plastic waste is by destructive
thermaltreatment,suchascombustionorpyrolysis.Thus,near-permanent
contamination of the natural environment with plastic waste is a grow-
ing concern. Plastic debris has been found in all major ocean basins (6),
with an estimated 4 to 12 million metric tons (Mt) of plastic waste
generated on land entering the marine environment in 2010 alone
(3). Contamination of freshwater systems and terrestrial habitats is
also increasingly reported (7–9), as is environmental contamination with
synthetic fibers (9,10). Plastic waste is now so ubiquitous in the
environment that it has been suggested as a geological indicator of the
proposed Anthropocene era (11).
We present the first global analysis of all mass-produced plastics
ever made by developing and combining global data on production,
use, and end-of-life fate of polymer resins, synthetic fibers, and addi-
tives into a comprehensive material flow model. The analysis includes
thermoplastics, thermosets, polyurethanes (PURs), elastomers, coatings,
and sealants but focuses on the most prevalent resins and fibers: high-
density polyethylene (PE), low-density and linear low-density PE,
polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), polyvinylchloride (PVC), poly-
ethylene terephthalate (PET), and PUR resins; and polyester, poly-
amide, and acrylic (PP&A) fibers. The pure polymer is mixed with
additives to enhance the properties of the material.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Global production of resins and fibers increased from 2 Mt in 1950 to
380 Mt in 2015, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.4%
(table S1), roughly 2.5 times the CAGR of the global gross domestic
product during that period (12,13). The total amount of resins and fi-
bers manufactured from 1950 through 2015 is 7800 Mt. Half of this—
3900 Mt—was produced in just the past 13 years. Today, China alone
accounts for 28% of global resin and 68% of global PP&A fiber pro-
duction (13–15). Bio-based or biodegradable plastics currently have
a global production capacity of only 4 Mt and are excluded from this
analysis (16).
We compiled production statistics for resins, fibers, and additives
from a variety of industry sources and synthesized them according to
type and consuming sector (table S2 and figs. S1 and S2) (12–24). Data
on fiber and additives production are not readily available and have
typically been omitted until now. On average, we find that nonfiber
plastics contain 93% polymer resin and 7% additives by mass. When
including additives in the calculation, the amount of nonfiber plastics
(henceforth defined asresins plus additives) manufactured since 1950
increases to 7300 Mt. PP&A fibers add another 1000 Mt. Plasticizers,
fillers, and flame retardants account for about three quarters of all ad-
ditives (table S3). The largest groups in total nonfiber plastics produc-
tion are PE (36%), PP (21%), and PVC (12%), followed by PET, PUR,
and PS (<10% each). Polyester, most of which is PET, accounts for
70% of all PP&A fiber production. Together, these seven groups ac-
count for 92% of all plastics ever made. Approximately 42% of all non-
fiber plastics have been used for packaging, which is predominantly
composed of PE, PP, and PET. The building and construction sector,
which has used 69% of all PVC, is the next largest consuming sector,
using 19% of all nonfiber plastics (table S2).
We combined plastic production data with product lifetime distri-
butions for eight different industrial use sectors, or product categories,
to model how long plastics are in use before they reach the end of their
useful lifetimes and are discarded (22,25–29). We assumed log-
normal distributions with means ranging from less than 1 year, for
packaging, to decades, for building and construction (Fig. 1). This is
a commonly used modeling approach to estimating waste generation
1
Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California,
Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.
2
College of Engineering, University
of Georgia, 412 Driftmier Engineering Center, Athens, GA 30602, USA.
3
Sea Edu-
cation Association, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA.
*Corresponding author. Email: geyer@bren.ucsb.edu
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for specific materials (22,25,26). A more direct way to measure plastic
waste generation is to combine solid waste generation data with waste
characterization information, as in the study of Jambeck et al. (3).
However, for many countries, these data are not available inthe detail
and quality required for the present analysis.
We estimate that in 2015, 407 Mt of primary plastics (plastics
manufactured from virgin materials) entered the use phase, whereas
302 Mt left it. Thus, in 2015, 105 Mt were added to the in-use stock.
For comparison, we estimate that plastic waste generation in 2010 was
274 Mt, which is equal to the independently derived estimate of
275 Mt by Jambeck et al. (3). The different product lifetimes lead to
a substantial shift in industrial use sector and polymer type between
plastics entering and leaving use in any given year (tables S4 and S5
and figs. S1 to S4). Most of the packaging plastics leave use the same
year they are produced, whereas construction plastics leaving use were
produced decades earlier, when production quantities were much
lower. For example, in 2015, 42% of primary nonfiber plastics produced
(146 Mt) entered use as packaging and 19% (65 Mt) as construction,
whereas nonfiber plastic waste leaving use was 54% packaging (141 Mt)
and only 5% construction(12 Mt). Similarly, in 2015, PVC accounted
for 11% of nonfiber plastics production (38 Mt) and only 6% of non-
fiber plastic waste generation (16 Mt).
By the end of 2015, all plastic waste ever generated from primary
plastics had reached 5800 Mt, 700 Mt of which were PP&A fibers.
There are essentially three different fates for plastic waste. First, it
can be recycled or reprocessed into a secondary material (22,26).
Recycling delays, rather than avoids, final disposal. It reduces future
plastic waste generation only if itdisplaces primary plastic production
(30); however, because of its counterfactual nature, this displacement
is extremely difficult to establish (31). Furthermore, contamination
and the mixing of polymer types generate secondary plastics of limited
or low technical and economic value. Second, plastics can be destroyed
thermally. Although there are emerging technologies, such as pyrolysis,
which extracts fuel from plastic waste, to date, virtually all thermal
destruction has been by incineration, with or without energy recovery.
The environmental and health impacts of waste incinerators strongly
depend on emission control technology, as well as incinerator design
and operation. Finally, plastics can be discarded and either contained
in a managed system, such as sanitary landfills, or left uncontained in
open dumps or in the natural environment.
We estimate that 2500 Mt of plastics—or 30% of all plastics ever
produced—are currently in use. Between 1950 and 2015, cumulative
waste generation of primary and secondary (recycled) plastic waste
amounted to 6300 Mt. Of this, approximately 800 Mt (12%) of plastics
Fig. 1. Product lifetime distributions for the eight industrial use sectors plotted as log-normal probability distribution functions (PDF). Note that sectors other
and textiles have the same PDF.
Fig. 2. Global production, use, and fate of polymer resins, synthetic fibers, and additives (1950 to 2015; in million metric tons).
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have been incinerated and 600 Mt (9%) have been recycled, only 10%
of which have been recycled more than once. Around 4900 Mt—60%
of all plastics ever produced—were discarded and are accumulating in
landfills or in the natural environment (Fig. 2). Of this, 600 Mt were
PP&A fibers. None of the mass-produced plastics biodegrade in any
meaningful way; however, sunlight weakens the materials, causing
fragmentation into particles known to reach millimeters or micro-
meters in size (32). Research into the environmental impacts of these
“microplastics”in marine and freshwater environments has accelerated
in recent years (33), but little is known about the impacts of plastic
waste in land-based ecosystems.
Before 1980, plastic recycling and incineration were negligible. Since
then, only nonfiber plastics have been subject to significant recycling
efforts. The following results apply to nonfiber plastic only: Global recy-
cling and incineration rates have slowly increased to account for 18 and
24%, respectively, of nonfiber plastic waste generated in 2014 (figs. S5
and S6). On the basis of limited available data, the highest recycling
rates in 2014 were in Europe (30%) and China (25%), whereas in the
United States, plastic recycling has remained steady at 9% since 2012
(12,13,34–36). In Europe and China, incineration rates have increased
over time to reach 40 and 30%, respectively, in 2014 (13,35). However,
in the United States, nonfiber plastics incineration peaked at 21% in
1995 before decreasing to 16% in 2014 as recycling rates increased, with
discard rates remaining constant at 75% during that time period (34).
Waste management information for 52 other countries suggests that in
2014, the rest of the world had recycling and incineration rates similar
to those of the United States (37). To date, end-of-life textiles (fiber
products) do not experience significant recycling rates and are thus
incinerated or discarded together with other solid waste.
Primary plastics production data describe a robust time trend
throughout its entire history. If production were to continue on this
curve, humankind will have produced 26,000 Mt of resins, 6000 Mtof
PP&A fibers, and 2000 Mt of additives by the end of 2050. Assuming
consistent use patterns and projecting current global waste manage-
ment trends to 2050 (fig. S7), 9000 Mt of plastic waste will have been
recycled, 12,000 Mt incinerated, and 12,000 Mt discarded in landfills
or the natural environment (Fig. 3).
Any material flow analysis of this kind requires multiple assump-
tions or simplifications, which are listed in Materials and Methods,
and is subject to considerable uncertainty; as such, all cumulative results
are rounded to the nearest 100 Mt. The largest sources of uncertainty
are the lifetime distributions of the product categories and the plastic
incineration and recycling rates outside of Europe and the United States.
Increasing/decreasing the mean lifetimes of all product categories by
1 SD changes the cumulative primary plastic waste generation (for 1950 to
2015) from 5900 to 4600/6200 Mt or by −4/+5%. Increasing/decreasing
current global incineration and recycling rates by 5%, and adjusting the
time trends accordingly, changes the cumulative discarded plastic waste
from 4900 (for 1950 to 2015) to 4500/5200 Mt or by −8/+6%.
The growth of plastics production inthe past 65 years has substan-
tially outpaced any other manufactured material. The same properties
that make plastics so versatile in innumerable applications—durability
and resistance to degradation—make these materials difficult or im-
possible for nature to assimilate. Thus, without a well-designed and
tailor-made management strategy for end-of-life plastics, humans
are conducting a singular uncontrolled experiment on a global scale,
in which billions of metric tons of material will accumulate across all
major terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems on the planet. The relative
advantages and disadvantages of dematerialization, substitution, reuse,
material recycling, waste-to-energy, and conversion technologies must
be carefully considered to design the best solutions to the environmental
challenges posed by the enormous and sustained global growth in
plastics production and use.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Plastic production
The starting point of the plastic production model is global annual
pure polymer (resin) production data from 1950 to 2015, published
by the Plastics Europe Market Research Group, and global annual
Fig. 3. Cumulative plastic waste generation and disposal (in million metric tons). Solid lines show historical data from 1950 to 2015; dashed lines show projections
of historical trends to 2050.
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fiber production data from 1970 to 2015 published by The Fiber Year
and Tecnon OrbiChem (table S1). The resin data closely follow a
second-order polynomial time trend, which generated a fit of R
2
=
0.9968. The fiber data closely follow a third-order polynomial time
trend, which generated a fit of R
2
= 0.9934. Global breakdowns of total
production by polymer type and industrial use sector were derived
from annual market and polymer data for North America, Europe,
China, and India (table S2) (12,13,19–24). U.S. and European data
are available for 2002 to 2014. Polymer type and industrial use sector
breakdowns of polymer production are similar across countries
and regions.
Global additives production data, which are not publicly available,
were acquired from market research companies and cross-checked for
consistency (table S3) (17,18). Additives data are available for 2000 to
2014. Polymer type and industrial use sector breakdowns of polymer
productionand the additives to polymer fraction were both stable over
the time period for which data are available and thus assumed con-
stant throughout the modeling period of 1950–2015. Any errors in
the early decades were mitigated by the lower production rates in those
years. Additives data were organized by additive type and industrial
use sector and integrated with the polymer data. P
i
(t) denotes the
amount of primary plastics (that is, polymers plus additives) produced
in year tand used in sector i(fig. S1).
Plastic waste generation and fate
Plastics use was characterized by discretized log-normal distributions,
LTD
i
(j), which denotes the fraction of plastics in industrial use sector i
used for jyears (Fig. 1). Mean values and SDs were gathered from pub-
lished literature (table S4) (22,25–29). Product lifetimes may vary sig-
nificantly across economies and also across demographic groups,
which is why distributions were used and sensitivity analysis was con-
ducted with regard to mean product lifetimes. The total amount of
primary plastic waste generated in year twas calculated as PW (t)=
∑8
i¼1∑65
j¼1PiðtjÞ∙LTDiðjÞ(figs. S3 and S4). Secondary plastic waste
generated in year twas calculated as the fraction of total plastic waste that
was recycled kyears ago, SW (t)=[PW(t−k)+SW(t−k)][RR (t−k)],
where kis the average use time of secondary plastics and RR (t−k)is
the global recycling rate in year t−k. Amounts of plastic waste discarded
and incinerated are calculated as DW(t)=[PW(t)+SW(t)∙DR(t)and
IW(t) = [PW(t) + SW(t)] ∙IR(t), with DR(t) and IR(t) being the global
discard and incineration rates in year t(fig. S5). Cumulative values at
time Twere calculated as the sum over all T−1950 years of plastics mass
production. Examples are cumulative primary production CPiðTÞ¼
∑T
t¼1950 PiðtÞand cumulative primary plastic waste generation,
CPWðTÞ¼∑T
t¼1950 PWðtÞ(Fig. 3).
Recycling, incineration, and discard rates
Time series for resin, that is, nonfiber recycling, incineration, and dis-
card rates were collected separately for four world regions: the United
States, the EU-28 plus Norway and Switzerland, China, and the rest of
the world. Detailed and comprehensive solid waste management data
for the United States were published by the U.S. Environmental Pro-
tection Agency dating back to 1960 (table S7) (34). European data
were from several reports by PlasticsEurope, which collectively cover
1996 to 2014 (12,13,38). Chinese data were synthesized and recon-
ciled from the English version of the China Statistical Yearbook, trans-
lations of Chinese publications and government reports, and
additional waste management literature (35,36,39–41). Waste man-
agement for the rest of the world was based on World Bank data (37).
Time series for global recycling, incineration, and discard rates (fig. S5)
were derived by adding the rates of the four regions weighted by their
relative contribution to global plastic waste generation. In many world
regions, waste management data were sparse and of poor quality. For
this reason, sensitivity analysis with regard to waste management rates
was conducted.
The resulting global nonfiber recycling rate increased at a constant
0.7% per annum (p.a.) between 1990 and 2014. If this linear trend is
assumed to continue, the global recycling rate would reach 44% in
2050. The global nonfiber incineration rate has grown more unevenly
but, on average, increased 0.7% p.a.between 1980 and 2014. Assuming
an annual increase of 0.7% between 2014 and 2050 yielded a global
incineration rate of 50% by 2050. With those two assumptions, global
discard rate would decrease from 58% in 2014 to 6% in 2050 (fig. S7).
The dashed lines in Fig. 3 are based on those assumptions and there-
fore simply forward projections of historical global trends and should
not be mistaken for a prediction or forecast. There is currently no sig-
nificant recycling of synthetic fibers. It was thus assumed that end-of-
life textiles are incinerated and discarded together with all other
municipal solid waste.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS
Supplementary material for this article is available at http://advances.sciencemag.org/cgi/
content/full/3/7/e1700782/DC1
fig. S1. Global primary plastics production (in million metric tons) according to industrial use
sector from 1950 to 2015.
fig. S2. Global primary plastics production (in million metric tons) according to polymer type
from 1950 to 2015.
fig. S3. Global primary plastics waste generation (in million metric tons) according to industrial
use sector from 1950 to 2015.
fig. S4. Global primary plastics waste generation (in million metric tons) according to polymer
type from 1950 to 2015.
fig. S5. Estimated percentage of global (nonfiber) plastic waste recycled, incinerated, and
discarded from 1950 to 2014 [(12,13,34–42) and table S7].
fig. S6. Annual global primary and secondary plastic waste generation TW (t), recycling RW (t),
incineration IW (t), and discard DW (t) (in million metric tons) from 1950 to 2014.
fig. S7. Projection of global trends in recycling, incineration, and discard of plastic waste from
1980 to 2014 (to the left of vertical black line) to 2050 (to the right of vertical black line).
table S1. Annual global polymer resin and fiber production in million metric tons (12–15).
table S2. Share of total polymer resin production according to polymer type and industrial use
sector calculated from data for Europe, the United States, China, and India covering the period
2002–2014 (12,13,19–24).
table S3. Share of additive type in global plastics production from data covering the period
2000–2014 (17,18).
table S4. Baseline mean values and SDs used to generate log-normal product lifetime
distributions for the eight industrial use sectors used in this study (22,25–29).
table S5. Global primary plastics production and primary waste generation (in million metric
tons) in 2015 according to industrial use sector.
table S6. Global primary plastics production and primary waste generation (in million metric
tons) in 2015 according to polymer type/additive.
table S7. Additional data sources for U.S. plastics recycling and incineration.
table S8. Complete list of data sources.
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Acknowledgments: We thank C.-J. Simon and R. Nayaran f or providing polymer productio n
data and G.L. Maho ney for designin g Fig. 2. We especially thank I. Creel man and R. Song
for data collecti on and model impleme ntation, E. Smith for assistance in compiling the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and China solid waste management data, S. Wang for
researching Ch ina plastic wast e management and tr anslation of art icles, J. Chamberlain
for researchi ng additives, and I. MacAdam-Somer for researching synthetic fibers. This
work benefitted from helpful discussions with T. Siegler and C. Rochman and comments
from two anonymous reviewers. Funding: This work was conducted within the Mar ine
Debris Working Group at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synt hesis,
University of California, Santa Barbara, with su pport from Ocean Conservancy. R.G. was
supported by the NSF Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems
grant #1335478. Author contributions: R.G. led the re search design, data collection, model
development, ca lculations, interpretation of results, and writing of the manuscript;
J.R.J. contrib uted to research design, data collection, model development, and int erpretation
of results; K.L.L. contributed to research desi gn, analysis and interpretatio n of results,
and writing of the manuscript. Com peting interes ts: The authors declare that they have
no competing interests. Data and materials availability: All data needed to eval uate
the conclusion s in the paper are pre sent in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials.
Additional data related to this paper may be requested from the author s.
Submitted 9 March 2017
Accepted 16 June 2017
Published 19 July 2017
10.1126/sciadv.1700782
Citation: R. Geyer, J. R. Jambeck, K. L. Law, Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made.
Sci. Adv. 3, e1700782 (2017).
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Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made
Roland Geyer, Jenna R. Jambeck and Kara Lavender Law
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1700782
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