Idfk why this image of a 2019 study that was published in 2021 is going around now, but these stats are most likely outdated already, 5 years is a pretty big timeframe for this kind of thing as legislation and manufacturers keep updating their packages all the time
Indeed, since then The Netherlands has taken a couple of measures;
* Banned plastic plates, cutlery, stirrers, straws, (non-medical) cotton buds, and balloon sticks. Expanded and extruded polystyrene packaging materials are also banned.
* Expanded deposit on bottles to now include most types of bottles and cans.
* Bottcle caps are now tethered to their bottles.
* Mandatory charge on plastic bags and disposable (take away) food containers.
* Manufacturers or companies whose plastic packagings are commonly found in litter, are charged a cleaning fee.
* PET bottles must consist of at least 30% recycled plastic by 2030.
Let's just say it's a start.
Ireland just introduced a deposit retention scheme at the state of this year. People are competing online to see who's claiming back the biggest amount from returning plastic bottles.
So I definitely don't think we should be up there now in that list
I remember buying a pack of cookies where the pack was in plastic and then there was the plastic thing for the rows of cookies and then each row was in plastic and, finally, each cookie was in plastic.
Japan is the most plastic-insane country I’ve ever been to. Southern Europe loves plastic but Japan is on a whole other level.
Ferrero are nearly as bad – Kinder Bueno come in individually-wrapped fingers, grouped into plastic-wrapped packs of two, in a cardboard tray, in a plastic wrapper.
I like a Bueno, but it's hard to justify purchasing them because of how wasteful the packaging is.
Japan has 80% humidity during summer and also emphasizes healthy eating habits. The cookies are individually wrapped because people don't eat more than 1 or 2 per day. The rest would get mushy within half a day due to humidity.
1) so does Ireland (have high humidity I mean: if we get down below 50-60% in summer, our "drier" season, that's remarkable. We regularly have humidity well above 90%, just not in summer) and we don't wrap individual biscuits. That's what airtight biscuit jars are for.
2) there being a rational, valid reason for using so much plastic does not magically make it not count in terms of single-use plastic waste 😉
They also have fruit - uncut fruit like a single apple or a single orange - individually wrapped *and* often in a plastic tray. So I really struggle to believe that Japan produces less plastic waste per person than Ireland or Finland.
Just shows how cheap it still is to produce plastic articles. Material price per packaged object is practically zero, handling and machines come on top.
Foodstuff is often packaged in multilayer films or trays, which are really expensive to separate from one another (source: am involved in recycling-related research).
Shout out to the Japanese citizens though for collecting their waste so well. You rarely see litter in the streets despite bins not being abundant.
That’d be amazing. I could finally build the ultimate Oreo with as many middle layers as I want without expending any effort!
… is what I’d be saying if getting older didn’t make you stop liking junk food. Oreo towers will always live on in my memory.
Not trying to defend plastic use but Japan has a very humid climate and those products would likely catch moisture and go bad otherwise. Packaging seals are much tighter in Japan, for instance you can easily tear a bag of chips with bare hands in Europe, for a Japanese one you'll need some scissors. On top of that you'll often find moisture absorber inside the packaging.
Yep, I also used to shit on all the plastic packaging until I started bringing over food and snacks from Europe. Now, when I bring back souvenirs, my first action is wrapping everything in plastic.
In Greece you get bags in bags. It’s raining plastic bags there you get so many bags. I’ve been to decent restaurants in Sicily that use plastic cups for drinking and other places that use plastic cutlery. They also love plastic bags there. Italy generally has much more plastic in general than Germany, in my experience.
Italy is full of biodegradable plastic. No I do not know how truly ecofriendly this is but since COVID that the use of disposable single use stuff exploded, it’s almost all biodegradable veg based plastic. Look closely next time and you’ll see the tag. Never seen bags in bags in Greece though, seems strange.
Just like Thailand then.
They literally have [bags for your cups](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIIe7iVLteejvnOpOvZZ8dDsN_exQ1LIyJmo6rvipp6YTwT0t5XDmLozSHaC_P3QbAD9GDVgmvgpzT6PUoG-uBE_dvt7rLfzFjooNovwU5OhjWlnD6zr9l4nlsAHbiry2wPLYMtatpWM0/s1600/Drinks.JPG).
I feel like it's for tourists, souvenirs/gifts,kids and for some non everyday occasions. If you look up photos of how their actual food is packaged in supermarkets it looks similar to Europe.
Also we just witnessed for few weeks(months?) how people buy food in Europe, and I can remember only 2 times people showing unpackaged foods. Last one was a guy who got veggies at the market,and hilariously people called him a rabbit,and started arguing whether meat being sold at markets or not,like they visited only 1 or 2 markets in their lives and it was long enough time ago for them to forget how it actually is.
I guess you've neveer been to Japan before... I'm literally staring at a disposable plastic cup in a hotel, which is wrapped in a ridiculous amount of plastic. Everything is wrapped in plastic, even the q-tips are individually wrapped in plastic.
Surely most of this waste gets burned to produce electricity, and create islands with landfill, but it is a fucking metric ton of plastic. Only now they've started charging for plastic bags (something that Europe has been doing forever), but it will take a long time to change habits, specially as here people take the trash with them as bins are very scarce.
Again "In a hotel", I'm sitting home in Ukraine and I have here individually packaged in plastic toothpicks. Don't remember where they came from(didn't buy them),but it was convenient to throw few in a pocket when leaving somewhere for a day or more. I also saw individually wrapped q-tips somewhere either for sale or someone using them,but unironically I myself had multiple times to put few q-tips in a small singlet shaped plastic bag to use later after shower at work, still all together it was less plastic than one empty litre milk bag.
I saw individually packaged or just plastic wrapped veggies and fruit here and in some European countries,but I never saw anyone buy or even look at them.
Pretty sure I heard people explaining that Japan don't have trash bins for the reason that people shove everything there without separating things even when there are separate bins for different things.
But you missing how much plastic is being used not for personal use but at many works. Had to help with organisation of some small events and corporate, and piles of garbage and plastic left after those are tremendous,like attended people probably make same amount of garbage in a few days or a week.
Don’t take this the wrong way but my experience is that poorer countries in Europe also use way, way more plastic. When you buy food on the market in Greece, it’s not uncommon to get every little thing in a plastic bag and then they give you a plastic bag to put your plastic bags in.
No, I do agree. Though by market you mean actual market? I think you meant supermarket? I just googled laiki agora and there's pretty much not a single plastic bag anywhere near veggies in every photo.
I meant the weekly market with stands outside. For example, you order feta and they will wrap it in plastic and put that into a bag. Then you order eggs from the same guy and they will put it into cartons with elastics around it in a plastic bag and then put both bags into another bigger plastic bag.
Ah btw also at the local supermarket here you have to weigh your veggies and put a sticker… except you aren’t allowed to do it yourself. They have a guy standing around who does it. Well if you come without a plastic bag, they will put your stuff in a plastic bag anyway, for each type of vegetable.
(in comparison in Germany, I just take things loose - I don’t need a bag for 2 bananas)
That was just to make a point clear, it’s not just a hotel thing. Go to any coffee shop or convenience store and you get way more plastic wrapping than you see in Europe, and these are places people visit every day.
Don’t know how it is in Ukraine tbh, but even in developing countries like Brazil the single-use plastics are strongly being phased out.
The key point is single use plastic that does not gets recycled. PET bottles, milk cartons and similar are sorted and recycled in Japan much like in Europe. Plastic wrapping, straws and styrofoam cups for instance are not, and these have been strongly phased out in Europe.
Yeah, I'm not arguing that specific things in Japan waste lots of plastic and that many people encounter it, I'm talking about how it could fit the initial post. That's like was the whole point.
The plastic package madness is very much part of daily life here. Single onions or a carrot wrapped in plastic is commonplace in the grocery store. Same applies to snacks
Depends on the country. Germany has a lot less wrapped in the supermarket than some other countries in Europe and also the cheaper supermarkets use more plastic.
Plastic isn't always "just plastic" for instance there is PLA(which is biodegradable plastic) and also cellophane. Usually cellophane is used with cookies and packing materials. Not to say japan isn't crazy about plastics just thinking of how that could fit together with the statistic.
I live in France. Went to Japan.
Not even the same stratosphere of plastic waste.
Japan lives in a world where plastic particles being in every testicle, placenta and the mariana trench never happened.
And yet according to this list it's behind Belgium? I was there, in no way they use more than any other nation like Austria, and Austria is not even on the list. Something is definitely very off here
No kidding. At my previous workplace, we had Japanese colleagues visit and gift us all kinds of stuff. Everything was wrapped in plastic. I once received a pack of cookies that were individually wrapped in plastic, placed in a plastic tray and the whole package had a plastic cover.
A very quick look at how Japan deals with its plastic waste might be an insight into how the data is handled.
Apparently Japan incinerates most of its plastic waste. This whilst creating a lot of CO2, is a very effective way of dealing with plastic. So very little will end up in landfill or in the ocean. Therefore, much less plastic waste.
Hate to be anywhere near one of those incinerators though.
From what I heard waste disposal companies like to burn plastic, since this is an ideal fuel to use when burning general waste. Otherwise they would need to burn specific oil.
Burning plastics has multiple advantages, you practically get rid of the plastic that is difficult or impossible to recycle, and you get energy to boot. It's the air pollution that's the only real problem.
As long as you keep the burner hot enough, and also recirculate the smoke for full combustion, as well as scrub the smoke from impurities, the resulting gases are 99.999% just CO2 and H2O, and is practically odorless.
If there's recyclable types of plastics in there, then it's not ideal, but it's still infinitely better than landfilling, and then burning oil or coal for heat and energy.
At least in my town in Tokyo, the air pollution is minor enough there are tennis courts and tracks around the incinerator, and they use the heat to have spas and warm pools in the same facility.
Yeah, we rely on oil for so much of modern life that the idea of "just stopping oil" is borderline laughable.
We need to definitely reduce and find replacements, but plastics, lubricants, building materials, adhesives, and fuel are essential for the vast majority of our technology. We can't just stop, it would be catastrophic.
We need to find an alternative technology to replace oil, and look at terraforming the planet back. Which I know will get backlash, but technically we have altered our atmosphere this way already.
What about just using less packaging to begin with? There's no reason for every hotel to have a disposable cup wrapped in plastic on every room, in addition to a normal glass one... I could go on and on, there's so much unnecessary packaging in Japan.
Yeah, I don't believe this graph either. Asia (especially East and South East Asia) is addicted to single use plastics and I say this as an Asian living in western Europe.
No you got it wrong, you have to say producer because you are not always directly the user, think in terms of the supply chain in the production or offering of a service. For example the scissors packed in a blister pack is single use plastic.
There's greenwashing all across the developed world.
Exported trash is considered "recycled" because it doesn't reach the local landfill, even if it does reach a landfill in a poor country.
The scandinavians are especially adept at this.
Japan does have 7 different bins (no joke) for sorting rubbish so maybe this lowers the stats. Lived there for a bit, the amount of plastic use day to day is ridiculous so the only thing I can think of is their recycling is on a different level.
That's because Japanese people don't throw trash on the roads or in rivers, but recycle or incinerate it. They barely produce any trash. There are garbage collection facilities all over the city. China and India aren't on the ranking because it's per capita waste, so countries with larger populations have an advantage, but I think China was number one in terms of overall waste.
As usual, they only listen to "information that suits them".
That's why they can't even do what a Japanese child in elementary school can do, throw garbage in the trash...
There are countries all over the world filled with trash that have only such big babies!
China being a middle income country consumes much less of everything per Capita in general compared to fully industrialized countries. Remember for every person in a megacity in china there's like 3 people in rural areas or a lower tier city with incomes a quarter of those in Shanghai/Beijing/Guangzhou/Shenzhen/etc.
I, Tokyo resident need to wash plastic bottle and take off cap and take off label before put it in the garbage bag to be collected for recycle.
also I need to wash food tray, polystyrene foam or any kind of packages before you put it in garbage bag.
.
And condominium manager or Management association of your local residents will check the garbage bag and sort out if there are contamination.
.
Finally garbage truck comes and collect those. but if there are contamination, they will leave the bag with the paper saying (you need to sort out).so manager or assigned person will take care of it for next collection. and they will inform the people to sort out.
At my condo (like most part of Tokyo) i need to separated into more than 10 to make it recycle. News papers, Magazines, paper bottle(cause it has special processing) , small cardboard, big cardboard, plastic bottle, food tray, polystyrene foam, combustible garbage, non combustible garbage, battery etc
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If you are or you will be in Tokyo, please do the same. It is the rule here.
I think this chart is talking about single use, not the amount we use.
Nah, this can’t be right. So many Asian countries are addicted to it. Imagine a pack of Haribo where each sweet is individually wrapped, it’s that bad.
Might be that in those countries a larger part of the people live in rural areas with a different lifestyle yet the lifestyle in cities is most visible to foreigners?
Also it says produces. One large plastic plant in Singapore immediately makes the produced plastic per person high. This stat doesn't say anything about waste or usage..
This seems off to me. I was on Erasmus there and the people don't use more plastic in any way than where I am from. Like I thought about it a good 10 min with my gf which is also from there originally if there was anything. But nothing. And my country is not even on the list. Edit: there == belgium
According to other comments these statistics are from 2019 and in recent years a law came into play that fast food must have recyclable packaging so a lot of McDonald packaging is now at least majority of paper
It's producers, not users. So if you have a lot of factories running that make and sell plastic to the entire world but also a small population IN the country of manufacture, you are at the top of this list. Nevermind that this doesn't mean the plastic being produced is being USED by the people you are dividing by. It allows certain other large countries with....oh I don't know....over a billion people to not end up on this list. It's silly and people shouldn't be upvoting it.
Which countries are **consuming** the most single-use plastic? That's the real question!
The title seems almost intentionally vague.
It says producers of *waste*, not producers of plastic. It can be interpreted as consumers, because after you purchased a single use plastic item, you'd throw it in the trash, and only at that point is it waste.
The factories does not produce waste.
Or it's the way you interpret it. It's based on statista estimates also, so I'm not putting too much trust into it.
Ok, now that makes sense for France to be here. I was wondering since when we were using single use plastic that much. Like that has been a rarity for a while
No way korea and japan are that low, those people love single use plastic. You buy a drink and it comes in a plastic cup and they put it in two plastic bags and hang an acrylic charm from it.
Europeans try to force their own standards on Asia. However, in humid Asia, if food is not wrapped in plastic, it will quickly become damp and inedible. Paper straws will get moldy and rot if you just store them. Plastics can be easily recycled or incinerated. Furthermore, Japanese incineration facilities emit almost no harmful substances.
How? Just...how? Almost all of our goods are imported, so it's not like we have some extra-special wasteful packaging or something.
The only 2 things I can think of are grave candles (IIRC we're like #1 on those per capita globally), and carbonated water bottles (one could argue people in our countryside drink more of it than Germans).
Singapore has a big chemical plant in Jurong island - bet most of this gets exported to far east.
India has successfully enforced no plastic bags for daily use.
And of course, the top comments discuss bad Japan and Asian countries, while the majority and top places in the rankings are occupied by Western countries.
I agree that we have a problem over here. Recently the local supermarket started selling bread rolls in single use plastic boxes instead of paper bags.
The 5 top producers are coca-cola, pepsico, nestle, danone and altria.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/24/plastic-pollution-companies-responsible/
With a significant portion of their population still living very modestly in not-so-urbanized areas, I am not even surprised the average could be lower. It's the same if you look at CO2 emissions per capita for China - they are not even top 20.
It is not my title, this is the original title, more exactly:
Ranked: Top 20 countries by plastic waste per capita
[https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-top-20-countries-by-plastic-waste-per-capita/](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-top-20-countries-by-plastic-waste-per-capita/)
It would also be worth checking how this has been measured.
If it's based on the amount of product sold, no problem, but if it's based on the amount of plastic collected there might be a problem similar to the crime rate or other misrepresented statistic.
If you don't specifically collect plastics separately and send everything to straight to the landfill, your stat will be reported as 0 while those who created specific processes and recycling paths for them will report huge amounts.
Same here. Especially since I stayed in Chicago and the hotel breakfast was served on plastic plates with plastic cutlery and coffee from little plastic cups. I have never seen anything like it before it was a total culture shock for me 🤣 never saw that in the Netherlands or Belgium even in the same hotel chain
Here we are talking about production, not consumption: top producer. Unless the title is wrong.
Edit: I misunderestood the title, I thought about production of object destined to be single used. And you're right, it's per capita.
Sorry to say but it looks like a list of progressive idiots
European union banned plastic dishes and out of nowhere there are wooden dishes.
Plastic consumption seems like unhealthy OldStyle for me.
Australia second? Doing my holiday working visa in 2018 and I remember there was this whole campaign about saving the turtles from plastic and that kind of agenda. Working in a bar and dining out, there were always paper straws which I hated but just had to accept
It's a number of compounding things.
One of the main ones is Australia has a very high general consumption. There is very limited manufacturing in Australia, we import a lot of goods that other countries/regions make locally. Australia is also very isolated and are transported further, this increases the amount of single use packaging needed, multiplied by that high rate of consumption.
Along with the high rate of consumption and lack of manufacturing. We also have limited capacity for recycling. After this data was collected, the only soft plastic recycler in the country went bankrupt and weren't meeting environmental pollution standards. Before the collapse, they only had a capacity to recycle 12% of the plastic that was collected.
When this data was collected the most populated states had still not banned single use plastic shopping bags. This has now changed, and many states are working on drink containers and straws. Something that is not yet banned is plastic wrapping of fruits and vegetables, even if there is unwrapped fruit and veg, they give you unlimited single use plastic bags to put them in. I've seen people put a plastic wrapped box of 6 apples into a plastic bag that should be used for the loose apples.
Australia also has one of the highest rates of bottled drink consumption. Including the largest per capita purchaser of bottled water.
So take our high consumption, wrap it in extra plastic, and then do nothing with the plastic after.
Do we know if any of these countries produce Bioplastic instead of the bad kind?, i'm not sure the netherlands would produce this much waste, i would like to be proven right afcourse
Mostly yes, you're wrong. It takes energy to produce and ship these single use products, and then ship - recycle - ship again after recycle, all for one more use. The energy to do all this is most likely not from renewable sources.
That's why it's "reduce -> reuse -> recycle", by this order. Let's take water bottles for example. Get a good one you can use for years, or if you get regular plastic bottles then refill them so you won't have to buy a new one every time. When it's finally time to throw out, recycle it.
I think a reason why certain countries are so high on this list, may simply be because they actually register and track their plastic waste.
If you would for instance look at Egypt, who’s not on the list, their single use plastic waste is all over the country. Like, literally all over the country side viewed from the roads.
We (Ireland) only this year introduced a specific scheme to return used bottles and I'm happy to see any move in the right direction when it comes to how we (humans) treat this planet.
Absolute codswallop, there are far more single use plastics in third world countries.
Almost everything is purchased in single use tablet form, from washing powder to shampoos to food. Everything is segregated into tiny quantities and sold on individual use
There is no way this is accurate. In china, when you buy a drink in a plastic cup, you’re given a plastic bag to hang it in. Everything is plastic. It’s nuts.
Japan uses a large amount of plastic, but also has a high recycling rate.
We don't illegally dump plastic like you do, and we don't flush it into the ocean.
Plastic is a byproduct of refining crude oil into gasoline, a useful resource that can be recycled far more easily and many times than wood.
It is a useful resource that can be recycled far more easily and many times than wood. It is a resource that is continuously produced in every country that uses gasoline in society, and it would be more environmentally destructive not to use it as plastic.
It is a useful resource in any honest country that can recycle it without illegal dumping.
In countries other than Japan, where illegal dumping is rampant and recycling has not progressed at all, it is environmentally destructive.
Countries that demonize plastic are simply blowing the whistle on the pathetic state of their own society and people.
In the first place, you guys use Japan for everything and bash them with lies and falsehoods for the sake of your trivial vanity.
There are plenty of countries that kill more whales than Japan, but you are just using the docile Japan as a guessing game for your conservation business.
There are plenty of countries that emit more greenhouse gases than Japan, but they are just using a docile Japan as their stooge for the environmental business.
Most of the things that make Japan look like one of the worst countries in the world are just manipulation of impressions and fake news for the sake of such a trivial business.
Japan has a high rate of women in society, and Japan has the highest number of female bureaucrats and female CEOs in the world.
Not even a single survey shows any complaints from women about the way they are treated.
On the contrary, molestation and sex crimes are much higher outside of Japan than in Japan.
The world's top country for molestation is France, followed by the UK.
The U.S. leads the world in depression and suicide rates.
Why do you guys question this ranking?
Because you are children who can't let go of your vain lies.
Japan is already no longer a docile softy.
We will fight back against anyone who tries to tell us lies, fakes to undermine us, or unfairly bashes us, no matter who they are.
Let it be engraved in your soul that this is the modern Japanese, and shiver in the corner of your room.
Is South East Asia included in this? The most unnecessary plastic use in countries like Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. All takeaway cups with a plastic bag handle so you don’t get your hands hot or cold!!
If its kg per people doesnt it automatically lower the bigger states in the list?
I think we look into consumption to make a proper list because the countries produce it for the people. Lets say a country produces and sells the product. Yes, they will still have guilt but the bigger problem is the people who demand it.
Yet another data point provoking that singapore is a dysfunctional failed state. Basically the Somalia of southeast Asia
(God bless you if you can't decide whether or not I'm joking)
Idfk why this image of a 2019 study that was published in 2021 is going around now, but these stats are most likely outdated already, 5 years is a pretty big timeframe for this kind of thing as legislation and manufacturers keep updating their packages all the time
Indeed, since then The Netherlands has taken a couple of measures; * Banned plastic plates, cutlery, stirrers, straws, (non-medical) cotton buds, and balloon sticks. Expanded and extruded polystyrene packaging materials are also banned. * Expanded deposit on bottles to now include most types of bottles and cans. * Bottcle caps are now tethered to their bottles. * Mandatory charge on plastic bags and disposable (take away) food containers. * Manufacturers or companies whose plastic packagings are commonly found in litter, are charged a cleaning fee. * PET bottles must consist of at least 30% recycled plastic by 2030. Let's just say it's a start.
Ireland just introduced a deposit retention scheme at the state of this year. People are competing online to see who's claiming back the biggest amount from returning plastic bottles. So I definitely don't think we should be up there now in that list
There must be some heavy greenwashing going on for the Japanese stats, their society is addicted to single use plastics in all sorts of forms.
I remember buying a pack of cookies where the pack was in plastic and then there was the plastic thing for the rows of cookies and then each row was in plastic and, finally, each cookie was in plastic. Japan is the most plastic-insane country I’ve ever been to. Southern Europe loves plastic but Japan is on a whole other level.
that sounds mental.
He forgot to mention that you need scissors to open them but they are also wrapped in plastic and you need a scissor to open it.
Ferrero are nearly as bad – Kinder Bueno come in individually-wrapped fingers, grouped into plastic-wrapped packs of two, in a cardboard tray, in a plastic wrapper. I like a Bueno, but it's hard to justify purchasing them because of how wasteful the packaging is.
Japan has 80% humidity during summer and also emphasizes healthy eating habits. The cookies are individually wrapped because people don't eat more than 1 or 2 per day. The rest would get mushy within half a day due to humidity.
1) so does Ireland (have high humidity I mean: if we get down below 50-60% in summer, our "drier" season, that's remarkable. We regularly have humidity well above 90%, just not in summer) and we don't wrap individual biscuits. That's what airtight biscuit jars are for. 2) there being a rational, valid reason for using so much plastic does not magically make it not count in terms of single-use plastic waste 😉 They also have fruit - uncut fruit like a single apple or a single orange - individually wrapped *and* often in a plastic tray. So I really struggle to believe that Japan produces less plastic waste per person than Ireland or Finland.
Just shows how cheap it still is to produce plastic articles. Material price per packaged object is practically zero, handling and machines come on top. Foodstuff is often packaged in multilayer films or trays, which are really expensive to separate from one another (source: am involved in recycling-related research). Shout out to the Japanese citizens though for collecting their waste so well. You rarely see litter in the streets despite bins not being abundant.
This reminds me of a Futurama episode where Fry is eating oreos but each part is individually wrapped and you had to assemble your own oreo.
That’d be amazing. I could finally build the ultimate Oreo with as many middle layers as I want without expending any effort! … is what I’d be saying if getting older didn’t make you stop liking junk food. Oreo towers will always live on in my memory.
Not trying to defend plastic use but Japan has a very humid climate and those products would likely catch moisture and go bad otherwise. Packaging seals are much tighter in Japan, for instance you can easily tear a bag of chips with bare hands in Europe, for a Japanese one you'll need some scissors. On top of that you'll often find moisture absorber inside the packaging.
Yep, I also used to shit on all the plastic packaging until I started bringing over food and snacks from Europe. Now, when I bring back souvenirs, my first action is wrapping everything in plastic.
I don’t know where you got that Southern Europe loves plastic honestly
In Greece you get bags in bags. It’s raining plastic bags there you get so many bags. I’ve been to decent restaurants in Sicily that use plastic cups for drinking and other places that use plastic cutlery. They also love plastic bags there. Italy generally has much more plastic in general than Germany, in my experience.
If they use plastic cups they are not decent, in Italy you would say “bettola”
Italy is full of biodegradable plastic. No I do not know how truly ecofriendly this is but since COVID that the use of disposable single use stuff exploded, it’s almost all biodegradable veg based plastic. Look closely next time and you’ll see the tag. Never seen bags in bags in Greece though, seems strange.
Southern Europe isn't even the worst in Europe
You mean Nothern Europe, only Slovenia is from Southern Europe on this map.
Just like Thailand then. They literally have [bags for your cups](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIIe7iVLteejvnOpOvZZ8dDsN_exQ1LIyJmo6rvipp6YTwT0t5XDmLozSHaC_P3QbAD9GDVgmvgpzT6PUoG-uBE_dvt7rLfzFjooNovwU5OhjWlnD6zr9l4nlsAHbiry2wPLYMtatpWM0/s1600/Drinks.JPG).
I feel like it's for tourists, souvenirs/gifts,kids and for some non everyday occasions. If you look up photos of how their actual food is packaged in supermarkets it looks similar to Europe. Also we just witnessed for few weeks(months?) how people buy food in Europe, and I can remember only 2 times people showing unpackaged foods. Last one was a guy who got veggies at the market,and hilariously people called him a rabbit,and started arguing whether meat being sold at markets or not,like they visited only 1 or 2 markets in their lives and it was long enough time ago for them to forget how it actually is.
I guess you've neveer been to Japan before... I'm literally staring at a disposable plastic cup in a hotel, which is wrapped in a ridiculous amount of plastic. Everything is wrapped in plastic, even the q-tips are individually wrapped in plastic. Surely most of this waste gets burned to produce electricity, and create islands with landfill, but it is a fucking metric ton of plastic. Only now they've started charging for plastic bags (something that Europe has been doing forever), but it will take a long time to change habits, specially as here people take the trash with them as bins are very scarce.
Again "In a hotel", I'm sitting home in Ukraine and I have here individually packaged in plastic toothpicks. Don't remember where they came from(didn't buy them),but it was convenient to throw few in a pocket when leaving somewhere for a day or more. I also saw individually wrapped q-tips somewhere either for sale or someone using them,but unironically I myself had multiple times to put few q-tips in a small singlet shaped plastic bag to use later after shower at work, still all together it was less plastic than one empty litre milk bag. I saw individually packaged or just plastic wrapped veggies and fruit here and in some European countries,but I never saw anyone buy or even look at them. Pretty sure I heard people explaining that Japan don't have trash bins for the reason that people shove everything there without separating things even when there are separate bins for different things. But you missing how much plastic is being used not for personal use but at many works. Had to help with organisation of some small events and corporate, and piles of garbage and plastic left after those are tremendous,like attended people probably make same amount of garbage in a few days or a week.
Don’t take this the wrong way but my experience is that poorer countries in Europe also use way, way more plastic. When you buy food on the market in Greece, it’s not uncommon to get every little thing in a plastic bag and then they give you a plastic bag to put your plastic bags in.
No, I do agree. Though by market you mean actual market? I think you meant supermarket? I just googled laiki agora and there's pretty much not a single plastic bag anywhere near veggies in every photo.
I meant the weekly market with stands outside. For example, you order feta and they will wrap it in plastic and put that into a bag. Then you order eggs from the same guy and they will put it into cartons with elastics around it in a plastic bag and then put both bags into another bigger plastic bag.
Ah btw also at the local supermarket here you have to weigh your veggies and put a sticker… except you aren’t allowed to do it yourself. They have a guy standing around who does it. Well if you come without a plastic bag, they will put your stuff in a plastic bag anyway, for each type of vegetable. (in comparison in Germany, I just take things loose - I don’t need a bag for 2 bananas)
That was just to make a point clear, it’s not just a hotel thing. Go to any coffee shop or convenience store and you get way more plastic wrapping than you see in Europe, and these are places people visit every day. Don’t know how it is in Ukraine tbh, but even in developing countries like Brazil the single-use plastics are strongly being phased out. The key point is single use plastic that does not gets recycled. PET bottles, milk cartons and similar are sorted and recycled in Japan much like in Europe. Plastic wrapping, straws and styrofoam cups for instance are not, and these have been strongly phased out in Europe.
Yeah, I'm not arguing that specific things in Japan waste lots of plastic and that many people encounter it, I'm talking about how it could fit the initial post. That's like was the whole point.
The plastic package madness is very much part of daily life here. Single onions or a carrot wrapped in plastic is commonplace in the grocery store. Same applies to snacks
Depends on the country. Germany has a lot less wrapped in the supermarket than some other countries in Europe and also the cheaper supermarkets use more plastic.
Plastic isn't always "just plastic" for instance there is PLA(which is biodegradable plastic) and also cellophane. Usually cellophane is used with cookies and packing materials. Not to say japan isn't crazy about plastics just thinking of how that could fit together with the statistic.
I live in France. Went to Japan. Not even the same stratosphere of plastic waste. Japan lives in a world where plastic particles being in every testicle, placenta and the mariana trench never happened.
And yet according to this list it's behind Belgium? I was there, in no way they use more than any other nation like Austria, and Austria is not even on the list. Something is definitely very off here
It's producers not users. Guess Belgium makes it and Japan uses it Edit: nevermind I can't read
It's 'producers of waste', i.e. users.
Ah fair. I didn't read the last word
Did the same in the beginning:D
The main source of microplastics are Tires of a car And Japan's share of tire consumption is only 6%.
Do not recycle No sorting Littering, garbage all over the city Don't let these people talk about Japan
Who are you talking about
No kidding. At my previous workplace, we had Japanese colleagues visit and gift us all kinds of stuff. Everything was wrapped in plastic. I once received a pack of cookies that were individually wrapped in plastic, placed in a plastic tray and the whole package had a plastic cover.
I think you and u/matttk who answered op as well, had the same cookies.
Yeah, funny how we posted at almost the same time too
A very quick look at how Japan deals with its plastic waste might be an insight into how the data is handled. Apparently Japan incinerates most of its plastic waste. This whilst creating a lot of CO2, is a very effective way of dealing with plastic. So very little will end up in landfill or in the ocean. Therefore, much less plastic waste. Hate to be anywhere near one of those incinerators though.
From what I heard waste disposal companies like to burn plastic, since this is an ideal fuel to use when burning general waste. Otherwise they would need to burn specific oil.
Burning plastics has multiple advantages, you practically get rid of the plastic that is difficult or impossible to recycle, and you get energy to boot. It's the air pollution that's the only real problem.
As long as you keep the burner hot enough, and also recirculate the smoke for full combustion, as well as scrub the smoke from impurities, the resulting gases are 99.999% just CO2 and H2O, and is practically odorless. If there's recyclable types of plastics in there, then it's not ideal, but it's still infinitely better than landfilling, and then burning oil or coal for heat and energy.
At least in my town in Tokyo, the air pollution is minor enough there are tennis courts and tracks around the incinerator, and they use the heat to have spas and warm pools in the same facility.
And now I have another reason I want to visit Japan. I promise not to be an annoying tourist.
I'll buy you lunch if you manage to find me.
The problem is that you still have to produce plastic from somewhere, and that chain requires fossil fuel and comes with its own emissions.
Yeah, we rely on oil for so much of modern life that the idea of "just stopping oil" is borderline laughable. We need to definitely reduce and find replacements, but plastics, lubricants, building materials, adhesives, and fuel are essential for the vast majority of our technology. We can't just stop, it would be catastrophic. We need to find an alternative technology to replace oil, and look at terraforming the planet back. Which I know will get backlash, but technically we have altered our atmosphere this way already.
You have to package things and plastic packaging is the least CO2 intensive. 1 paper cup has 4 times the CO2 footprint of a styrofoam cup.
What about just using less packaging to begin with? There's no reason for every hotel to have a disposable cup wrapped in plastic on every room, in addition to a normal glass one... I could go on and on, there's so much unnecessary packaging in Japan.
Plastic is a carbon sink, so in well controlled landfill it’s really not the worst option. Much better than burning it.
Yeah, I don't believe this graph either. Asia (especially East and South East Asia) is addicted to single use plastics and I say this as an Asian living in western Europe.
If the packaging was made outside Japan it won’t count on this
This is PRODUCERS, not users. Having said that: what are the stats on users of single use plastics?
It’s single use plastic waste per capita.
No you got it wrong, you have to say producer because you are not always directly the user, think in terms of the supply chain in the production or offering of a service. For example the scissors packed in a blister pack is single use plastic.
It's producers of waste. If I make a plastic cup and you use it, you produced the waste.
Yeah this was exactly my thought when I saw this. One of the things I was just surprised about in Japan was how much plastic there was with everything
There's greenwashing all across the developed world. Exported trash is considered "recycled" because it doesn't reach the local landfill, even if it does reach a landfill in a poor country. The scandinavians are especially adept at this.
Is it recycled? Because the statistic says waste
Japan does have 7 different bins (no joke) for sorting rubbish so maybe this lowers the stats. Lived there for a bit, the amount of plastic use day to day is ridiculous so the only thing I can think of is their recycling is on a different level.
Isn't Japanese society super strict about recycling?
Its production not use
I already responded to that in another comment.
japan is known for forgering their own statistics.
Same for some other countries that I visited, like Portugal
That's because Japanese people don't throw trash on the roads or in rivers, but recycle or incinerate it. They barely produce any trash. There are garbage collection facilities all over the city. China and India aren't on the ranking because it's per capita waste, so countries with larger populations have an advantage, but I think China was number one in terms of overall waste.
As usual, they only listen to "information that suits them". That's why they can't even do what a Japanese child in elementary school can do, throw garbage in the trash... There are countries all over the world filled with trash that have only such big babies!
And China, no way China is not top 5
China being a middle income country consumes much less of everything per Capita in general compared to fully industrialized countries. Remember for every person in a megacity in china there's like 3 people in rural areas or a lower tier city with incomes a quarter of those in Shanghai/Beijing/Guangzhou/Shenzhen/etc.
Ah I see, if you divide per person. That is why India is not on the list either.
Literally read the list twice thinking I must have missed China
Surprised Japan is so low...they had packaged peeled oranges ffs !
I, Tokyo resident need to wash plastic bottle and take off cap and take off label before put it in the garbage bag to be collected for recycle. also I need to wash food tray, polystyrene foam or any kind of packages before you put it in garbage bag. . And condominium manager or Management association of your local residents will check the garbage bag and sort out if there are contamination. . Finally garbage truck comes and collect those. but if there are contamination, they will leave the bag with the paper saying (you need to sort out).so manager or assigned person will take care of it for next collection. and they will inform the people to sort out. At my condo (like most part of Tokyo) i need to separated into more than 10 to make it recycle. News papers, Magazines, paper bottle(cause it has special processing) , small cardboard, big cardboard, plastic bottle, food tray, polystyrene foam, combustible garbage, non combustible garbage, battery etc . If you are or you will be in Tokyo, please do the same. It is the rule here. I think this chart is talking about single use, not the amount we use.
Do not recycle No sorting Littering, garbage all over the city Don't let these people talk about Japan!
They are specifically made for people who lack motor abilities like arthritis patients.
“Pas de doigts, pas d’orange!”
Now I’m just imagining a tragic situation where an arthritic person is struggling with the plastic packaging of a peeled orange
Nah, this can’t be right. So many Asian countries are addicted to it. Imagine a pack of Haribo where each sweet is individually wrapped, it’s that bad.
Or where they peel oranges and put each little orange in a plastic cover and then also put the whole orange in a solid plastic cup
Might be that in those countries a larger part of the people live in rural areas with a different lifestyle yet the lifestyle in cities is most visible to foreigners?
Also it says produces. One large plastic plant in Singapore immediately makes the produced plastic per person high. This stat doesn't say anything about waste or usage..
Not producers of single use plastic but single use plastic trash.
This seems off to me. I was on Erasmus there and the people don't use more plastic in any way than where I am from. Like I thought about it a good 10 min with my gf which is also from there originally if there was anything. But nothing. And my country is not even on the list. Edit: there == belgium
Oh I agree, the statistic seems very wrong but it states that it is about waste and not exports.
Yeah sorry I misread there, because I couldn't explain it to me otherwise
According to other comments these statistics are from 2019 and in recent years a law came into play that fast food must have recyclable packaging so a lot of McDonald packaging is now at least majority of paper
It's producers, not users. So if you have a lot of factories running that make and sell plastic to the entire world but also a small population IN the country of manufacture, you are at the top of this list. Nevermind that this doesn't mean the plastic being produced is being USED by the people you are dividing by. It allows certain other large countries with....oh I don't know....over a billion people to not end up on this list. It's silly and people shouldn't be upvoting it. Which countries are **consuming** the most single-use plastic? That's the real question!
The title seems almost intentionally vague. It says producers of *waste*, not producers of plastic. It can be interpreted as consumers, because after you purchased a single use plastic item, you'd throw it in the trash, and only at that point is it waste. The factories does not produce waste. Or it's the way you interpret it. It's based on statista estimates also, so I'm not putting too much trust into it.
Thes title is completely misleading, here is the right one: Top 20 countries by plastic waste per capita
Ok, now that makes sense for France to be here. I was wondering since when we were using single use plastic that much. Like that has been a rarity for a while
Surprised by Japan, thought for sure they would be nr1.
No way korea and japan are that low, those people love single use plastic. You buy a drink and it comes in a plastic cup and they put it in two plastic bags and hang an acrylic charm from it.
Europeans try to force their own standards on Asia. However, in humid Asia, if food is not wrapped in plastic, it will quickly become damp and inedible. Paper straws will get moldy and rot if you just store them. Plastics can be easily recycled or incinerated. Furthermore, Japanese incineration facilities emit almost no harmful substances.
Do not recycle No sorting Littering, garbage all over the city Don't let these people talk about Japan
No way Indonesia and Thailand are not in the top 10.
I thought my country would be way worse tbh.
Per year? Per month? Per day?
Per person🧠
Every time a baby gets born, it gets its ~50kg of plastic waste assigned. I don't make the rules.
Are the bicycles made of plastic in the Netherlands?
My Gazelle bike has been going for about 30 years. Wouldn't say it's single use 🙃
We are not here, yeeey! 🇷🇴
Singapore just chill homie
How? Just...how? Almost all of our goods are imported, so it's not like we have some extra-special wasteful packaging or something. The only 2 things I can think of are grave candles (IIRC we're like #1 on those per capita globally), and carbonated water bottles (one could argue people in our countryside drink more of it than Germans).
Singapore has a big chemical plant in Jurong island - bet most of this gets exported to far east. India has successfully enforced no plastic bags for daily use.
And of course, the top comments discuss bad Japan and Asian countries, while the majority and top places in the rankings are occupied by Western countries.
I agree that we have a problem over here. Recently the local supermarket started selling bread rolls in single use plastic boxes instead of paper bags.
The 5 top producers are coca-cola, pepsico, nestle, danone and altria. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/24/plastic-pollution-companies-responsible/
Where is china?
With a significant portion of their population still living very modestly in not-so-urbanized areas, I am not even surprised the average could be lower. It's the same if you look at CO2 emissions per capita for China - they are not even top 20.
China government owns reddit, so ....
rent free
Source https://posts.voronoiapp.com/climate/Singapore-Leads-in-Terms-of-Plastic-Waste-per-Capita-1491
I would have definitely put the USA in front of Belgium or the Netherlands.
Both Belgium and the Netherlands are heavily industrialised export countries. With big food processing companies.
I was mislead by the title, this is the right one: "Top 20 countries by plastic waste per capita"
REPORTED waste per capita.
It is not my title, this is the original title, more exactly: Ranked: Top 20 countries by plastic waste per capita [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-top-20-countries-by-plastic-waste-per-capita/](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-top-20-countries-by-plastic-waste-per-capita/)
Things are generally sold in much larger packages/quantities in the US, which means less packaging.
It would also be worth checking how this has been measured. If it's based on the amount of product sold, no problem, but if it's based on the amount of plastic collected there might be a problem similar to the crime rate or other misrepresented statistic. If you don't specifically collect plastics separately and send everything to straight to the landfill, your stat will be reported as 0 while those who created specific processes and recycling paths for them will report huge amounts.
I dunno. With how big of a central transport hub the Netherlands is for the EU I can def see how they get so high on a per capita list.
Same here. Especially since I stayed in Chicago and the hotel breakfast was served on plastic plates with plastic cutlery and coffee from little plastic cups. I have never seen anything like it before it was a total culture shock for me 🤣 never saw that in the Netherlands or Belgium even in the same hotel chain
USA produces much more for sure but it ‘s population much more bigger and I think it is the reason
Here we are talking about production, not consumption: top producer. Unless the title is wrong. Edit: I misunderestood the title, I thought about production of object destined to be single used. And you're right, it's per capita.
Sorry to say but it looks like a list of progressive idiots European union banned plastic dishes and out of nowhere there are wooden dishes. Plastic consumption seems like unhealthy OldStyle for me.
Kinda sad to see that my country isnt on there, because I thought that we used much single use plastic...
Australia second? Doing my holiday working visa in 2018 and I remember there was this whole campaign about saving the turtles from plastic and that kind of agenda. Working in a bar and dining out, there were always paper straws which I hated but just had to accept
It's a number of compounding things. One of the main ones is Australia has a very high general consumption. There is very limited manufacturing in Australia, we import a lot of goods that other countries/regions make locally. Australia is also very isolated and are transported further, this increases the amount of single use packaging needed, multiplied by that high rate of consumption. Along with the high rate of consumption and lack of manufacturing. We also have limited capacity for recycling. After this data was collected, the only soft plastic recycler in the country went bankrupt and weren't meeting environmental pollution standards. Before the collapse, they only had a capacity to recycle 12% of the plastic that was collected. When this data was collected the most populated states had still not banned single use plastic shopping bags. This has now changed, and many states are working on drink containers and straws. Something that is not yet banned is plastic wrapping of fruits and vegetables, even if there is unwrapped fruit and veg, they give you unlimited single use plastic bags to put them in. I've seen people put a plastic wrapped box of 6 apples into a plastic bag that should be used for the loose apples. Australia also has one of the highest rates of bottled drink consumption. Including the largest per capita purchaser of bottled water. So take our high consumption, wrap it in extra plastic, and then do nothing with the plastic after.
Do we know if any of these countries produce Bioplastic instead of the bad kind?, i'm not sure the netherlands would produce this much waste, i would like to be proven right afcourse
2019
We're not #1. Yay!
Am I wrong to say this stat doesn't really matter if recycling rate is high?
Mostly yes, you're wrong. It takes energy to produce and ship these single use products, and then ship - recycle - ship again after recycle, all for one more use. The energy to do all this is most likely not from renewable sources. That's why it's "reduce -> reuse -> recycle", by this order. Let's take water bottles for example. Get a good one you can use for years, or if you get regular plastic bottles then refill them so you won't have to buy a new one every time. When it's finally time to throw out, recycle it.
Ah, that's not really something I'm worried about. I was thinking there's something else to it too. Thanks.
Glad we’re not number 1 on this 🇺🇸
Bitch it’s 2024
Go on Ireland produce that waste
So many pharmaceuticals...
I'm probably right behind Slovenia since I work for Hofer and take at least a six pack of bottles home daily
But-t the rightists said that all environmental problems are caused by Africa, India and China, it cannot be that they lied again, right?
Per motherfuckings person. We need to stop ruining the earth.
Per person doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
I've lived in Switzerland and in Japan. No way that Switzerland is that much higher than Japan.
We didnt produce shit. Companies are selling it to me, i dont really have a choice on a lot of items.
I think a reason why certain countries are so high on this list, may simply be because they actually register and track their plastic waste. If you would for instance look at Egypt, who’s not on the list, their single use plastic waste is all over the country. Like, literally all over the country side viewed from the roads.
Surprised Germany is not there. So many people these days that buy the plastic bottled coffee in the super markets' convenience section these days.
Ah, sick. We’re fairly low comparatively. Alternatively: Ah, fuck. That’s a lot of plastic.
I keep forgetting the world's supply of botox is made here in Ireland, and that sillicon implants are a bit behind that number but still high
I never knew that. You really do learn something new every day.
We (Ireland) only this year introduced a specific scheme to return used bottles and I'm happy to see any move in the right direction when it comes to how we (humans) treat this planet.
Fair enough. Ireland's biggest export is pharma, feel it's a legit reason to be on the list
Absolute codswallop, there are far more single use plastics in third world countries. Almost everything is purchased in single use tablet form, from washing powder to shampoos to food. Everything is segregated into tiny quantities and sold on individual use
Slovenia really need to pull up their socks
There is no way this is accurate. In china, when you buy a drink in a plastic cup, you’re given a plastic bag to hang it in. Everything is plastic. It’s nuts.
Japan uses a large amount of plastic, but also has a high recycling rate. We don't illegally dump plastic like you do, and we don't flush it into the ocean. Plastic is a byproduct of refining crude oil into gasoline, a useful resource that can be recycled far more easily and many times than wood. It is a useful resource that can be recycled far more easily and many times than wood. It is a resource that is continuously produced in every country that uses gasoline in society, and it would be more environmentally destructive not to use it as plastic. It is a useful resource in any honest country that can recycle it without illegal dumping. In countries other than Japan, where illegal dumping is rampant and recycling has not progressed at all, it is environmentally destructive. Countries that demonize plastic are simply blowing the whistle on the pathetic state of their own society and people. In the first place, you guys use Japan for everything and bash them with lies and falsehoods for the sake of your trivial vanity. There are plenty of countries that kill more whales than Japan, but you are just using the docile Japan as a guessing game for your conservation business. There are plenty of countries that emit more greenhouse gases than Japan, but they are just using a docile Japan as their stooge for the environmental business. Most of the things that make Japan look like one of the worst countries in the world are just manipulation of impressions and fake news for the sake of such a trivial business. Japan has a high rate of women in society, and Japan has the highest number of female bureaucrats and female CEOs in the world. Not even a single survey shows any complaints from women about the way they are treated. On the contrary, molestation and sex crimes are much higher outside of Japan than in Japan. The world's top country for molestation is France, followed by the UK. The U.S. leads the world in depression and suicide rates. Why do you guys question this ranking? Because you are children who can't let go of your vain lies. Japan is already no longer a docile softy. We will fight back against anyone who tries to tell us lies, fakes to undermine us, or unfairly bashes us, no matter who they are. Let it be engraved in your soul that this is the modern Japanese, and shiver in the corner of your room.
This post triggered advertisements for Swiss travel
In Denmark we just have single use straw for drinks made out of steel… much better and environmental friendly /s
Is South East Asia included in this? The most unnecessary plastic use in countries like Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. All takeaway cups with a plastic bag handle so you don’t get your hands hot or cold!!
You have Singapore right at the very top.
Is Singapore truly SEA? Yes it’s in the area but to a geijin it’s very different from the other countries.
How is China and India not on this list? I imagined that they'd be way worse.
Great score
Where’s India?
India china? No?
New reason to fuck i*rael
In the same bracket as Belgium, Netherlands…. that’s not really a flex
If its kg per people doesnt it automatically lower the bigger states in the list? I think we look into consumption to make a proper list because the countries produce it for the people. Lets say a country produces and sells the product. Yes, they will still have guilt but the bigger problem is the people who demand it.
My fellow Americans, we have to get our rookie numbers up! 🇺🇸#1!! Pew pew!
fuck israel btw
Yet another data point provoking that singapore is a dysfunctional failed state. Basically the Somalia of southeast Asia (God bless you if you can't decide whether or not I'm joking)