3 ms·
It might be 4% of one year, but what about all the plastic produced in the last 70 years?
by pier25 3y ago
It might be 4% of one year, but what about all the plastic produced in the last 70 years?
- maxerickson 3y agoYeah, it's gonna be similar in magnitude to 3 years. Not excellent, but not going to make a long run difference either. That's without looking at estimates of plastic production, but it's likely enough to be higher now than the majority of the 70 years.
- sbierwagen 3y agoHere's the graph of global plastics production: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/global-plastics-production.svg https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/global-plastics-p... It's an exponential curve. Most plastic made was made relatively recently. This is less obvious in the first world, where we've had consumer plastics for many decades. Most growth in plastic use happens outside the US.
- cthalupa 3y agoMy understanding is that 4% number is for the oil used in plastic production, which is not necessarily the amount of oil sequestered in the actual plastic. Conversely, I don't know if that number includes production from natural gas and not just crude oil, and a lot of plastic feedstock is made from it.