Scientists calculate total amount of plastics ever produced

More than 8.3 billion metric tons (9.1 billion tons). That’s the amount of plastic humans have created since the large-scale production of synthetic materials began in the early 1950s. Most of this material now resides in landfills or in the natural environment. And the pace of plastic production shows no signs of slowing. Of the total amount of plastic resins and fibers produced from 1950 to 2015, roughly half was produced in the last 13 years.
If current trends continue, roughly 12 billion metric tons of plastic waste will be in landfills or the natural environment by 2050. An article about the research is published in Science Advances (News Item University of California, 19 July 2017).
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