Plastic Planet

Available for over a year

We use plastics every day, from packaging food to carrying it home in a shopping bag. They’re low cost, easy to manufacture and versatile, which is why over the past few decades our plastic consumption has skyrocketed. More than 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been manufactured since the material was initially mass-produced in the 1950s. Professor Roland Geyer has been quantifying our production and consumption of plastic over the decades and has shown that of the vast plastic waste we create; only 9% has been recycled. He suggests that far more needs to be done to get this growing problem under control. Picture: Plastic bottles in bin, credit: PIFICIO 42/Getty images