the amount of solid plastic waste produced since the 1950s that has not been burned or recycled as around four point nine billion tons this could all have been dumped into a 70 meter deep landfill the size of Manhattan while much of it has indeed ended up in landfill around the world far too much of it has found its way into the natural environment with around 10 million tons a year ending up in the ocean over half of all plastic is used just once and then thrown away taking hundreds of years to decompose apart from the perception that plastic waste is ugly and unnatural it has also been known to harm marine animals and exposed to salt water and sunlight it can fragment into micro plastics which some people fear can poison sea life and humans who subsequently consume it but is it as big an environmental problem as the plastic panic across the rich world suggests plastics account for just 10 percent of the 1.3 billion tons of waste produced globally every year air pollution is blamed for 7 million deaths per year worldwide ocean acidification the result of manmade carbon dioxide emissions it's disastrous for coral reefs and many other forms of sea life in any case efforts are being made to improve the situation or at least lessen the impact of plastic in 2008 Rwanda introduced strict laws banning plastic bags and many countries have since followed with similar initiatives in December 2017 193 countries committed to a UN plan to stop plastic waste entering the ocean to eliminate plastic waste reaching the natural environment it must first be collected in developed countries virtually all of it is but five countries in Asia are dumping more plastic into the oceans than the rest of the world combined if the world wants to tackle plastic pollution then it should first concentrate its efforts on the biggest culprits in Southeast Asia until it does all other efforts will be a walk to the ocean you