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The claim is that humans consume the equivalent of a credit card sized amount of plastic a week. See this article from ABC: https://abcnews.go.com/US/humans-con

The claim is that humans consume the equivalent of a credit card sized amount of plastic a week. See this article from ABC: https://abcnews.go.com/US/humans-consume-equivalent-credit-card-worth-plastic-week/story?id=63687144 https://abcnews.go.com/US/humans-consume-equivalent-credit-c... This "credit card" bit got popularized in news media because it was mentioned in this brochure put out by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on plastic ingestion: https://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/plastic_ingestion_press_singles.pdf https://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/plastic_ingestion_pres... Their claim in turn comes from this study from the University of Newcastle that was prepared specifically for the WWF (which suggests a potential conflict of interest), according to the list of references in the WWF brochure above. However, I'm not able to find the actual full paper anywhere, and this page last noted that it was being reviewed for publication: https://www.newcastle.edu.au/newsroom/featured/plastic-ingestion-by-people-could-be-equating-to-a-credit-card-a-week/how-much-microplastics-are-we-ingesting-estimation-of-the-mass-of-microplastics-ingested https://www.newcastle.edu.au/newsroom/featured/plastic-inges...

andrekandre 5y ago
from that abc article Since 2000, more plastic has been produced worldwide that all the preceding years combined, and about a third of the plastic ends up in nature, according to the report. is that accurate...? what changed after 2000 to enable this??
- Cerium 5y ago
  I think that the sentence is saying that in the period between 2000 and present day more plastic has been produced in the period from 2000 to -inf. A similar statement can be made about most human industrial products - cement production has a curve that appears to have more area post 2000 than pre.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  The human population is much larger and richer.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  My guess is that emergent economies are seeing more disposable income and the adoption of the same consumerist disposable everything habits, supplanting the lifestyle and economies they had previously. It’s especially bad in countries where environmental regulations and enforcement are far behind while consumption has caught up. You’ll often see this in YouTube videos showing garbage trucks just dumping trash (with significant amounts of plastics) straight into rivers, for example.

andrekandre 5y ago

from that abc article Since 2000, more plastic has been produced worldwide that all the preceding years combined, and about a third of the plastic ends up in nature, according to the report. is that accurate...? what changed after 2000 to enable this??

Cerium 5y ago
I think that the sentence is saying that in the period between 2000 and present day more plastic has been produced in the period from 2000 to -inf. A similar statement can be made about most human industrial products - cement production has a curve that appears to have more area post 2000 than pre.
maxerickson 5y ago
The human population is much larger and richer.
throwawaysea 5y ago
My guess is that emergent economies are seeing more disposable income and the adoption of the same consumerist disposable everything habits, supplanting the lifestyle and economies they had previously. It’s especially bad in countries where environmental regulations and enforcement are far behind while consumption has caught up. You’ll often see this in YouTube videos showing garbage trucks just dumping trash (with significant amounts of plastics) straight into rivers, for example.