Since plastic began to be mass-produced in the 1950s, the material has been building up in the environment and in people’s bodies. These six graphs illustrate just how bad the problem has gotten, and why delegates from more than 170 countries have committed to negotiating a global, legally binding treaty to “end plastic pollution.” The second part of the fifth round of talks about ending the global plastics crisis began on Tuesday and is scheduled to run through August 14 in Geneva, Switzerland.

The world produced 2 million metric tons of plastic in 1950. That number doubled to 4 million by 1955, then doubled again to 8 million in 1960, and has been increasing exponentially ever since. By 2019, the world was producing about 460 million metric tons of plastic every year — about the same weight as 88 Great Pyramids of Giza, showing the scale of the global plastics crisis.

Fossil fuel companies plan to produce even more plastic in the coming decades. According to a 2022 estimate from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD — an intergovernmental group that publishes reports and policy analyses — global production will reach 1.2 billion metric tons by 2060 unless some sort of restrictions are introduced. That’s more than 3,600 times the weight of the Empire State Building.

Skyrocketing plastic production has made life more convenient by making consumer goods and packaging lighter and cheaper. But it has also caused enormous waste management problems. Contrary to industry claims, plastic recycling does not work on a large scale: Only 9 percent of the plastic the world creates gets turned into a new product — and less than 1 percent is ever recycled more than once.

Most plastic — about 49 percent of it — is sent to landfills. Another 19 percent is burned in incinerators, and 22 percent is categorized by the OECD as “mismanaged” — a euphemism that means it’s burned in open pits, tossed into unofficial dumpsites, or littered into rivers and seas. Large pieces of plastic litter entangle and choke wildlife, and the small fragments that they break into — known as microplastics — leach hazardous chemicals that can further jeopardize animals and ecosystems.

Read the full article about the global plastics crisis by Joseph Winters at Grist.