The world is flooded with plastic garbage. There will be more plastic than fish in terms of weight in the world’s oceans by 2050, the World Economic Forum warned Jan. 19.

Plastic has become one of the world’s most popular materials, combining amazing functionality and very low production costs. Its use has increased 20-fold in the past 50 years and is expected to double again in the next 20 years.

Almost everybody in the world comes into contact with it — over a quarter of all plastic is used for packaging, the most popular use of the material.

But only 14 percent of plastic packaging is collected for recycling. The reuse rate is terrible compared to other materials — 58 percent of paper and up to 90 percent of iron and steel gets recycled.

It gets worse. Almost a third of all plastic packaging escapes collection systems and ends up in nature or clogging up infrastructure.

“After a short first-use cycle, 95 percent of plastic packaging material value, or $80 billion to $120 billion annually, is lost to the economy,” the WEF said in a report.

The report is based on interviews with over 180 experts and on analysis of over 200 reports.

They estimate that by 2050, the amount of plastics produced globally will increase three times to 1,124 million tons. By then, the “plastic economy” will take up 15 percent of the world’s global carbon budget, compared to just 1 percent today.

The so-called carbon budget is the total amount of carbon dioxide the world can pump into the atmosphere while still having a chance of stopping short of 2 degrees of global warming.

The forum said the only way to avoid a disaster is to massively improve the economics and uptake of recycling.

That means giving people incentives to collect plastic garbage and recycle, use reusable packaging, and encourage countries to drastically improve their waste collection infrastructure, to avoid plastic garbage leaking into the nature.

在我们的世界，塑料垃圾已经泛滥成灾。1月19日，世界经济论坛发出警告：到2050年，世界各大海洋中的塑料垃圾总重量将超过海中鱼类。

塑料制品应用广泛、造价低廉，在世界各地广受欢迎。过去五十年中，塑料使用量增长了20倍，并且有望在接下来的20年里再翻一番。

塑料制品中最受欢迎的当属塑料袋了，超过四分之一的塑料最终都用于包装。日常生活中，几乎每个人都要用到它。

但是，全球只有14%的塑料袋得以回收利用。纸张再用率为58%，而钢铁的循环使用率可高达90%，相较于这些资源，塑料的再使用情况则相当糟糕。

眼下，情况变得越来越糟了。近三分之一的塑料袋无法回收，要么堵塞在下水道，要么在自然界中“自生自灭”。

世界经济论坛在其报告中指出：“塑料袋的首次使用周期很短，由于再用率低下，95%的塑料袋都白白浪费掉了，造成的经济损失每年高达800亿至1200亿美元。”

这份报告是在采访了180多名专家，并对200多份报告进行了大量分析后提出的。

据预计，2050年全球塑料产量将增加三倍，高达11.24亿吨。届时，“塑料经济”将占有全球碳预算15%的份额，而目前其份额仅为1%。

所谓的“碳预算”是指全球排放到大气中的二氧化碳总量的上限，以保证还有机会将全球变暖的增幅遏制在两摄氏度内。

该论坛发表声明说，避免这一灾难的唯一途径就是大力改善提高循环使用率。这意味着激励人们去回收并循环使用塑料垃圾，使用可重复使用的包装袋，鼓励各国大力改善废物回收设施，以防止塑料垃圾排放到自然环境中。

    Words to Learn 相关词汇

   【堵塞】dǔsè clog up cause to become obstructed

    【预算】yùsuàn budget an itemized allotment of funds, time, etc., for a given period