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Plastic pollution and health
Summary
This commentary, published on World Environment Day 2023, highlights the scale of global plastic pollution—380 million tonnes produced annually, with only 9% recycled—and calls for urgent reductions in virgin plastic production. The piece emphasizes that 50% of all plastic is single-use, and that despite decades of awareness, production continues to outpace all mitigation efforts.
June 5 marks World Environment Day, which is now in its 50th year. The theme for 2023 is plastic pollution, under the campaign #BeatPlasticPollution. Despite efforts in recent decades to curtail the overwhelming flow of plastics, the scale of plastic production has surpassed every other material since the 1970s and the majority of these products are destined for landfill sites or leak into the environment. Perhaps most damning of all, as much as 50% of all plastic products produced (380 million tonnes annually) are only used once, and only 9% of plastics are recycled globally.