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  • Plastic Pollution
  • Where does the plastic in our oceans come from?

Charts

  • Cumulative displaced plastic waste as a result of Chinese import ban
  • Cumulative global production of plastics
  • Cumulative plastic exports by top ten exporters
  • Cumulative recycled plastic export value by top ten exporters
  • Decomposition rates of marine debris items
  • Extrapolated change in plastic fate
  • Global plastic waste by disposal
  • Global plastics production
  • Grocery bag comparisons for greenhouse gas emissions
  • Grocery bag comparisons of environmental impact
  • How much plastic waste did China import?
  • Macroplastics in the surface ocean
  • Mean product lifetime of plastic uses
  • Microplastics in the surface ocean
  • Mismanaged plastic waste
  • Mismanaged plastic waste per capita
  • Mismanaged plastic waste per capita vs. GDP per capita
  • Most common items of waste in the ocean by region
  • Per capita plastic waste vs. GDP per capita
  • Plastic exports to China by top 10 exporting countries
  • Plastic waste emitted to the ocean
  • Plastic waste emitted to the ocean per capita
  • Plastic waste emitted to the ocean per capita vs. GDP per capita
  • Plastic waste generation
  • Plastic waste generation by industrial sector
  • Plastic waste generation per person
  • Primary plastic production by industrial sector
  • Primary plastic production by polymer type
  • Primary plastic waste generation by polymer
  • Probability of mismanaged plastic waste being emitted to ocean
  • Share of cumulative plastic exports by top ten exporters
  • Share of global plastic waste emitted to the ocean
  • Share of ocean plastics that come from the largest emitting rivers
  • Surface plastic mass by ocean basin
  • Surface plastic particles by ocean basin
  • What are the most common items of waste found in rivers and oceans?
  • What items of waste do we find in rivers and the ocean?

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Licenses: All visualizations, data, and articles produced by Our World in Data are open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited. All the software and code that we write is open source and made available via GitHub under the permissive MIT license. All other material, including data produced by third parties and made available by Our World in Data, is subject to the license terms from the original third-party authors.

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Global Change Data Lab logoOur World In Data is a project of the Global Change Data Lab, a registered charity in England and Wales (Charity Number 1186433).