Twenty companies produce more than half the worldwide “throwaway” single-use plastic that ends up as waste, a new study says. New Zealand gets a brief mention in the research, with this country ranked 15th for single-use plastic waste generation per capita at 39kg per person per year. Oil and gas companies US-based ExxonMobil and China’s Sinopec were first and third for single-use plastic waste generation, while chemicals company US-based Dow was ranked second. Producers of the five primary single-use plastic polymers planned to increase capacity by 30 per cent in the next five years. That was in line with the historical growth in demand for single-use plastics from 2005-19, the report said.

Source: Stuff May 19, 2021 08:49 UTC