Plastics and recycling

Almost 50% of plastic products produced are used only once before they are discarded. Recovery and recycling rates of plastic vary considerably between countries and continents. Out of the cumulative 8000 million tons of plastic that have been produced (1950s to 2017):

of plastics were recycled,

were incinerated,

can still be found in landfills or polluting the environment₉.

Source: Swiss Re | Trucost (2016). Scaling Sustainable Plastics. Available at: https://www.trucost.com/publication/scaling-sustainable-plastics | The Atlantic (2017). Key information of plastic production and waste globally between 1950 and 2017. https://www.statista.com/statistics/728466/plastic-production-and-waste-worldwide-2017"