According to a news report on June 22, Taiwan media said that after mainland China announced in 2017 that it would no longer import “foreign waste,” a study pointed out that there will be more than 100 million tons of plastic waste in the world in the next 12 years.

According to a report by the "Central News Agency" website of Taiwan on June 21, citing Bloomberg News, according to a United Nations global trade analysis conducted by researchers at the University of Georgia, it is concluded that by 2030, an estimated 111 million tons of plastic waste will be buried or recycled.

The study pointed out that together with the bottles, bags and food bags used by everyone, as of 2017, the accumulated plastic production volume will reach 8.3 billion tons, and even 1 million tons of plastic products will illicitly circulate each year. This amount of 1 million tons is difficult to describe in detail. It is equivalent to about 621,000 Tesla Model3 cars, and the total of 700 million iPhones in the world is only about 100,000 tons.

According to reports, nearly four-fifths of all plastic products are sent to the garbage dump or flow into the natural environment, and only one-tenth will be incinerated. Millions of tons of water flow into the ocean each year, damaging beaches and contaminating the North Pacific. Only 9% of all plastic products produced by people were recycled. In 2016 alone, mainland China imported about 7.4 million tons of plastic products.

The report said that although the scale is not as good as in mainland China, but India, Vietnam, and Malaysia have already imported more plastic waste; Vietnam has recently suspended imports because ships loaded with plastic waste have blocked access to ports.

The researchers said that since the mass production of plastic products began in the early 1950s, the annual output has soared from about 2 million tons to 322 million tons in 2015. Currently, the output of plastic products far exceeds the amount that people can effectively handle, and it is expected to supply. Demand will only increase. It is worrying that the current recovery rate will be difficult to maintain.