Subscribe
India has secured the top spot as biggest plastic polluter in the world, releasing 9.3 million tonnes (Mt) annually, according to a new study. This amounts to roughly one-fifth of global plastic emissions.
The country’s official waste generation rate, approximately 0.12 kilogrammes per capita per day, is likely underestimated, the study published in the journal Nature highlighted. Additionally, waste collection is likely overestimated.
This could be because official statistics do not include rural areas, the open burning of uncollected waste, or waste recycled by the informal sector, the paper said.
Taking the second and third spots were Nigeria, with 3.5 Mt of emissions and Indonesia, with 3.4 Mt.
India has now become the most populous country. We account for open, uncontrolled burning as a core form of plastic pollution and some previous efforts did not take this into account or have underestimated it. India faces a major challenge concerning this unsustainable, hugely damaging practice
Costas Velis, one of the authors of the paper and academic on Resource Efficiency Systems from School of Civil Engineering at University of Leeds
The study defined plastic emissions as materials that have moved from the managed or mismanaged system (controlled or contained state) to the unmanaged system (uncontrolled or uncontained state — the environment).
Previous efforts identified China as the highest polluter globally. The new study, which uses recent data, placed China in the fourth spot, reflecting the country’s progress in adopting waste incineration and controlled landfills, the researchers wrote.
“China, which has a similar population [to India], has massively invested in the last 15 years in collection and processing infrastructure and services for municipal solid waste,” Velis added.
The expert also noted that previous studies used older data for major polluters like China, which could explain why their emissions were overestimated. The new study, he added, uses correction algorithms to account for unreported waste generated.
The study quantified emissions for 50,702 municipality-level administrations from five sources. These include uncollected waste, littering, collection systems, uncontrolled disposal and rejects from sorting and reprocessing.
Their analysis showed that global plastic waste emissions were at 52.1 Mt per year in 2020. While littering was the largest emission source in the Global North, uncollected waste was the dominant source across the Global South.
Globally, roughly 69 per cent or 35.7 Mt per year of the world’s plastic waste emissions come from 20 countries, of which four are low-income countries, nine are lower-middle-income countries and seven are upper-middle-income.
Furthermore, high-income countries have higher plastic waste generation rates, but none are ranked in the top 90 polluters, as most have 100 per cent collection coverage and controlled disposal, the study highlighted.
However, the researchers acknowledged they may have underestimated plastic waste emissions from some high-income countries, as they deliberately excluded plastic waste exports from their analysis.
These findings could inform the Global Plastics Treaty. In 2022, 175 nations agreed to develop a legally binding agreement on plastic pollution by 2024 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from plastic production, use and disposal.
“We offer a new comprehensive baseline and countries could reflect on the nature and extent of plastic pollution within their boundaries,” Velis said, adding that the study could also help nations develop action plans. Going forward, the team hopes to see more data in each country and to model the rural areas.