US World's Biggest Plastic Polluter: Study

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The United States is the world's biggest contributor to global plastic waste in the world, a new report submitted Wednesday to the federal government said.

The report called for a national strategy to tackle the crisis exacerbating climate change, whose repercussions have been ravaging the world, causing major catastrophes.

The analysis found that the United States has contributed some 42 million metric tons in plastic waste in 2016, which is more than double the amount China did and more than the European Union combined.

The United States, Britain, and South Korea topped the standings with 130 kg per capita, 99 kg per capita, and 88 kg per capita, respectively.

The report, "Reckoning with the US Role in Global Ocean Plastic Waste," was mandated by Congress as part of the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act enacted in December 2020.

Global plastic production saw a 20-fold between 1966, at 20 million metric tons, and 2015, at 381 million metric tons.

Research showed that around 1,000 species of marine life are susceptible to plastic entanglement or ingestion of microplastics. And those can make their way eventually into humans through the food web.

At the current rate, there is a risk of reaching 53 million metric tons discharged into the ocean annually, which amounts to half the total weight of fish caught from the ocean annually, the report said.

"An estimated 8 MMT of plastic waste enters the world annually, the equivalent of dumping a garbage truck of plastic waste into the ocean every minute," it found.

The report also clarified that one of the main contributors to the issue of plastic waste was the fact that the scale of recycling has not kept up with the stark increase in plastics in municipal solid plastic waste.