A Plastic World by Caterina Caccavale

An estimated 8 million tonnes of plastic enter our oceans each year.
The visualization shows the plastic waste accumulated in the oceans since 1951 by selected Country. The selected Country are arranged from top to bottom in chronological order of size from largest to smallest waste polluter (according 2019) and for each of them are indicated the following data: the plastic waste tonnes accumulated in the oceans according the reference year (2000-2019) and the average Worldwide plastic accumulated in the oceans in a year.

Of the 200 billion pounds of plastic people use each year, about 10% ends up in the ocean.
70% of that eventually sinks, but the other 30% is carried on the surface by ocean currents. When plastic ends up in the waters, much of it is swept up into currents that lead to the Pacific Gyre and and over the years a Garbage Patch* has been created.
Source: OECD (2022) – processed by Our World in Data. “Plastic leakage to aquatic envrionment - Leakage type: Accumulated stock in oceans” [dataset]. OECD, “Global Plastics Outlook - Plastic leakage to aquatic environments” [original data].