NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Of the nearly 350 million tons of plastics that are produced annually, about 70 percent end up in managed landfills or are incinerated, about 10 percent is recycled and the remaining 20 percent simply escape into the environment. According to the OECD, nearly 1.7 million tons of this plastic ends up in the oceans, and if evenly distributed, would create a wall of plastic waste that one would have to climb over to access the ocean the world over.