What happens to the plastic we buy? VIDEOGRAPHIC
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00:00What happens to the plastic we buy?
00:03When you buy one kilogram of plastic, you keep about 126 grams in the product you bought,
00:09and throw away the remaining 874 grams.
00:13Of the 874 grams, some, on average 128 grams, is collected for recycling,
00:19and among them, some will not be recycled, others lost, leaving only 68 grams which are reused.
00:26Of the waste that was not collected for recycling, 400 grams end up in landfill,
00:32and 156 are incinerated.
00:35There remain 184 grams of waste, 18% of the kilo of plastic you bought initially,
00:41and they are poorly managed, which means they end up in illegal dumps, 79 grams,
00:46or are burned in the open, 61 grams.
00:4930 end up in the environment, and the remaining 14 grams end up in rivers, lakes and oceans,
00:55the equivalent of a toothbrush.
00:57But that was for just one kilo of plastic.
00:59Each year we produce more than 460 billion kilos.
01:04So redo the calculations.