Plastic in numbers

Our daily plastic

The Horten department store in Neuss handed out
its first plastic bags in 1961. Since then,
we can hardly imagine a world without plastic.
But that is, in fact, exactly what we should do!

  • 25

    minutes is the average usage time of a plastic bag. In contrast, it takes about 20 to 500 years for a plastic bag to disintegrate if it isn't properly disposed of. Even so, the plastic never disappears. Rather, it merely breaks down into smaller and smaller microplastic particles that attract toxins like a magnet.

  • 32%

    of plastic packaging used worldwide, weighing a total of 78 million metric tons, ends up uncontrolled in the environment, such as in the oceans.

  • 2050

    there will be more plastic in the world's oceans than fish, as expected by researchers. Even today, there are more microplastic particles floating around in our oceans than there are stars in our galaxy.

  • 20

    years is how long a plastic bag needs to disintegrate, according to the German Environmental Agency.

  • 500

    years is the disintegration time for stable plastic packaging such as yogurt beakers and plastic bottles into particles.

  • 15

    years does it take for a cigarette butt to disintegrate. The butts also contain so many toxins that one single butt is enough to pollute 40 liters of drinking water. No wonder that they belong in the hazardous waste.

  • 90

    percent and more of people living in industrialized nations are chronically contaminated with bisphenol A (BPA), says Dieter Swandulla, Institute Director of the Physiology 2 Department at the University of Bonn. The plastic that we carelessly throw away into the environment hardly disappears but rather ends up back in our body through the food chain.

  • 50

    percent higher is a cucumber's shelf life if it is shrink-wrapped in plastic. It is thus not always right to demonize plastic in one sweeping generalization. Nevertheless, packaging is entirely unnecessary in most cases.

  • 583

    billion plastic bottles will be used worldwide by 2021 if this trend continues.

  • 460

    billion plastic bottles were sold in 2016, according to the market research institute Euromonitor International.

  • 300

    billion was the same figure in 2006.