Per capita plastic waste generation in US, Germany, Russia, Mexico, Egypt, China in 2016

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The graph that I have chosen to use is the data I found from Statista about plastic consumption in 2016. The data set included countries from over 20 countries, but I decided to pick 6 of the countries, ranging from levels of GDP, environmental awareness, and natural resources, etc. Unsurprisingly, the US ranked number one, which is 5 times of what china has. In today’s climate, the US made the public seem like other countries are doing way more harm to the environment than us ourselves, and this chart is really telling in terms of our contribution to environmental degradation.

On the other hand, I realised that GDP doesn’t necessarily reflect the consumption for plastic. according to Voanews, china accumulated 15.92 GDP vs the United States 23 GDP, however, the US uses 5 times more plastics than China. Therefore, environmental awareness is necessary regardless of level of GDP.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1228043/plastic-waste-generation-per-capita-in-select-countries/

https://www.voanews.com/a/chinas-economy-could-overtake-us-economy-by-2030/6380892.html

548 thoughts on “Per capita plastic waste generation in US, Germany, Russia, Mexico, Egypt, China in 2016”

  1. Thank you for your research on this topic. I liked your clarification on GDP not being completely reliable for this type of discussion, but I was not surprised to see the United States at the top of the list.

  2. Your discussion on the GDP and why it doesn’t reflect consumption of plastic was really interesting to me! I appreciated this research and the graph, which really opened my eyes to how great plastic waste generation really is.

  3. I wrote a similar response to what you had said with the comparison to China and the US, except with water usage. Although the US uses more plastic than China, wouldn’t China be just as responsible for climate change with their water consumption? Which is more harmful, plastic thrown around the environment or over usage of water?

  4. This is really interesting, Athena! If these are the highest plastic waste generators, then it’s a little bit scary to see how much more plastic waste the U.S. generates in comparison to 2nd place, and so on.