PLASTIC FACTS:
IN NEPAL,
Kathmandu alone uses around 4,700,000 to 4,800,000 plastic bags daily.
Plastic comprises 16 per cent urban waste in Nepal; 2.7 tons of daily plastic garbage production.
Kathmandu valley's population of 2.5 million produces produces 523 tonnes of waste per day, out of which 12 per cent is estimated to be plastic.
Only 40 to 50 percent of the Valley’s garbage goes to landfill site. The rest is dumped unsegregated.
ACROSS THE WORLD,
8.3 Billion Metric Tons of plastic has been produced since plastic was introduced in the 1950s. The amount of plastic produced in a year is roughly the same as the entire weight of humanity.
Nearly 2 million single-use plastic bags are distributed worldwide every minute.
ONE MILLION plastic bottles are bought EVERY MINUTE around the world — and that number will top half a TRILLION by 2021. Less than half of those bottles end up getting recycled.
100,000 marine mammals and turtles and 1 million sea birds are killed by marine plastic pollution annually.
Around the world 1 million plastic drinking bottles are purchased every minute. - 500 billion disposable plastic bags are used worldwide every year. - 50% of the plastic we use is single use
On average, a person uses a plastic bag for just 12 minutes but the same bag takes 500 years to decompose.
Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the earth four times.
Plastic chemicals can be absorbed by the body. Some of the compounds found in plastic have been found to alter hormones or have other potential human health effects.
Related story
The Bleak Legal Regime Addressing Plastic Pollution
