In 2020, amid rising concerns over the scale and impacts of
plastic pollution, The Pew Charitable Trusts, Systemiq and
their partners published Breaking the Plastic Wave (BPW1),
which found that the amount of plastic that would enter the
ocean each year from municipal solid waste would nearly
triple by 2040, increasing from 11 million metric tons (Mt) in
2016 to 29 Mt, unless the global community undertook the
ambitious actions identified in the report.

Despite that urgent call, progress towards that study’s vision
of coordinated measures across the entire plastic system to
reduce pollution has yet to be realised, and in the intervening
five years, 570 Mt of plastic pollution has entered the land, air
and water worldwide.

To help illuminate the consequences and implications of that
slow progress, the authors conducted a new, more comprehensive
analysis of plastic pollution in Earth’s waters, land and air.

This resulting report is an update to and expansion of BPW1
that builds on the better data that has become available over
the past five years to examine all major sectors of the global
plastic system. The analysis also found that plastic is interconnected with
other global challenges, and that solving the plastic pollution
problem will have broad implications for improving the health
of people, the planet and the global economy.

With the added urgency created by five more years of
growing plastic pollution, we renew and amplify the call for
ambitious action and transformative strategies to address not
only plastic pollution but also the far-reaching consequences
of the plastic system.

Download the full report, here