There’s literally a ton of plastic garbage for every person on Earth

“’I think for me that’s the single most surprising thing, the implication of the large growth rate,’ said Roland Geyer, one of the authors. Another surprise, he said, is how far the United States lags behind China and Europe in recycling plastic material.

“In the study, Geyer wrote, ‘On the basis of limited available data, the highest recycling rates in 2014 were in Europe (30 percent) and China (25 percent), whereas in the United States, plastic recycling has remained steady at 9 percent.’”