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Estimated global data for 2020 show that India was the worst polluting country with 9.3 million tonnes of plastic waste emissions-around a fifth of the world total
A study from the University of Leeds, published in Nature, has identified new hotspots of plastic pollution, with India emerging as the largest contributor, followed by Nigeria and Indonesia.
According to the researchers, estimated global data for 2020 show that the worst-polluting countries were India with 9.3 million tonnes of plastic waste emissions-around a fifth of the world total. Nigeria and Indonesia came in next with 3.5 million tonnes, and 3.4 million tonnes of plastic waste respectively.
“On an absolute basis, we find that plastic pollution emissions are highest across countries in Southern Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and South-eastern Asia, with the largest amount emitted by India, equivalent to nearly one-fifth of global plastic emissions,” the Nature says.
Conversely, the paper titled “A local-to-global emissions inventory of macroplastic pollution” say, “India reports that its dumpsites (uncontrolled land disposal) outnumber sanitary landfills by 10:1 and, despite the claim that there is a national collection coverage of 95%, there is evidence that official statistics do not include rural areas, open burning of uncollected waste or waste recycled by the informal sector.”
“This means that India’s official waste generation rate (approximately 0.12 kilograms per capita per day) is probably underestimated and waste collection overestimated,” the researcher say.
The researchers are Joshua W. Cottom, Ed Cook, and Costas A. Velis, all from the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom.
Researchers used A.I. to model waste management in more than 50,000 municipalities around the world. This model allowed the team to predict how much waste was generated globally and what happens to it.
Their study, published in the journal Nature, calculated a staggering 52 million tonnes of plastic products entered the environment in 2020 – which, laid out in a line, would stretch around the world over 1,500 times.
It also revealed that more than two thirds of the planet’s plastic pollution comes from uncollected rubbish with almost 1.2 billion people — 15% of the global population — living without access to waste collection services.
The findings further show that in 2020 roughly 30 million tonnes of plastics — amounting to 57% of all plastic pollution — was burned in homes, on streets and in dumpsites, without any environmental controls in place. Burning plastic comes with ‘substantial’ threats to human health, including neurodevelopmental, reproductive and birth defects.
The researchers say “China, previously reported to be the worst, is now ranked fourth, with 2.8 million tonnes, as a result of improvements to collecting and processing waste over recent years. The UK was ranked 135, with around 4,000 tonnes per year, with littering the biggest source. “
“The health risks resulting from plastic pollution affect some of the world’s poorest communities, who are powerless to do anything about it. By improving basic solid waste management, we can both massively reduce plastic pollution and improve the lives of billions,” Dr Josh Cottom says.
“This is an urgent global human health issue — an ongoing crisis: people whose waste is not collected have no option but to dump or burn it: setting the plastics on fire may seem to make them ‘disappear’, but in fact the open burning of plastic waste can lead to substantial human health damage including neurodevelopmental, reproductive and birth defects,” Dr Costas Velis says.
