JIANGSU GET RECYCLING TECHNOLOGY CO,.LTD.

In the 2018 annual statistics, there is a secret of becoming the world's richest man and buying the most valuable technology company.

In addition to various annual words in 2018, there are actually some little-known annual statistics. The annual figure published by the Royal Statistical Society is : 90.5%

90.5% is the proportion of plastic waste that has not been recycled in the world. This number has been selected from more than 200 nominations, reflecting the social issues that the public believes are urgently needed to be addressed.

The chairman of the Royal Statistical Society of the United Kingdom believes that a very small number of plastics are recycled, so a large amount of plastic waste is accumulating on a global scale. This is a huge, growing and truly global problem.

Humans began large-scale industrial production and manufacturing 60 years ago. Plastics have gradually occupied an important position in the use of consumer goods. Over 6.3 billion tons of plastic waste were produced over the years, 90.5% of which were not recycled. If we do not adjust the way we produce and use plastic, there will be 12 billion tons of plastic waste on Earth in 2050.

Professor Liberty Vittert of the University of Washington in St. Louis, who participated in this annual digital selection, also helped me with an account.

Plastics produced in 2018 can be filled with 72 trillion large shopping bags. Each large shopping bag can hold 31 plastic bottles, each of which costs 3.25 cents, so a shopping bag filled with empty plastic bottles worth 31 x 3.25 = 100.75 cents, or about $1.

That is to say, 72 trillion bags of plastic waste generated in 2018, the production cost is 72 trillion US dollars.

What can I buy for $72 trillion? Can buy Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Exxon, General Motors, AT&T, Facebook, Bank of America, Visa, Intel, Home Depot, HSBC, Boeing, Citibank, Anheuser-Busch (the largest in the US) Brewery), as well as all teams in the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and Premier League.

You can also understand that if someone recycles the discarded plastic on the earth, then the position of the richest man in the world is his.

In the past two decades, China has been the world's largest importer of foreign waste, cumulatively receiving of 106 million tons of foreign waste, including more than 45% of global plastic waste. China enacted a strict foreign garbage ban in 2018.

According to a study conducted by the University of Georgia in the middle of 2018, after the implementation of the foreign garbage ban in China, there will be no more than 111 million tons of plastic waste placed in the world by 2030. What is the concept of 1.11 million tons of plastic waste, equivalent to the weight of 20.4 million adult African elephants.

▲ Orange-yellow lines indicate plastic waste imported into China in 2016. Image courtesy of sciencemag.org

The source of plastic waste is mainly from the United States, Britain, Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia, Mexico and other countries, but developing countries such as Tanzania in Africa, Chile in South America and Indonesia in Southeast Asia have also exported plastic waste to China.

China's foreign garbage ban, so that the garbage that has been sorted and recycled in developed countries has already been sent to local landfills, and some have begun to be shipped to Vietnam, Thailand and other places.

Affected by the domestic foreign garbage ban, during the period from January to April last year, Taiwan imported plastic waste from the United Kingdom increased by 12 times, Malaysia increased by 2 times, and Thailand increased by 50 times.

In order to avoid becoming the next world garbage receiving site, Vietnam has also banned the import of plastic waste and restricted the import of waste paper waste since June 2018.

No one wants their home to be a dumping ground, and plastic waste that is nowhere to be placed is a waste of resources.