2018 Statistic of the Year: 90.5 Percent of Plastic Waste Has Never Been Recycled (bbc.com)

Two of 2018's best statistics from the Royal Statistical Society are about the environment. "The winning international statistic of the year was 90.5% -- the proportion of plastic waste that has never been recycled," reports the BBC. "And in the UK category, the top stat was 27.8% -- the highest percentage of all electricity which was generated by solar power." From the report: A panel of judges picked the two winners, along with several highly commended statistics, from more than 200 nominations. Entries for 2018 were submitted earlier this year. Judges on the panel included Dame Jil Matheson, former national statistician -- the top adviser to the government on official statistics, as well as RSS president Sir David Spiegelhalter, BBC home editor Mark Easton and the Guardian's U.S. data editor Mona Chalabi.

The environment and plastic waste has repeatedly made headlines in 2018, and "single-use" -- referring to plastic waste -- was named the word of the year. Other highly commended statistics include:

$1.3 billion: the amount lost from the value of Snapchat within a day after Kylie Jenner tweeted: "Sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore?"
85.9%: the proportion of British trains that ran on time -- the lowest for more than a decade
40%: the percentage of Russian men who do not live to the age of 65
64,946: the number of measles cases in Europe from November 2017 to October 2018
82%: the percentage of all British retail shopping that is still in-store rather than online
16.7%: the percentage reduction of the number of Jaffa Cakes in the McVities' Christmas tube
6.4%: the percentage of female executive directors within FTSE 250 companies

Comments

Popcorn time

[AmiMoJo]

Environmental protection, public transport, women... I'm sure this will be a quiet thread, nothing controversial there.

Re:Popcorn time

[Nidi62]

By eating popcorn you are just funneling more money and therefore influence to the powerful corn and ethanol/HFCS lobby. Why do you hate the planet and skinny people?

Re:Plastic Waste

[bill_mcgonigle]

Today's landfills are tomorrow's robotic mines. Labor is just too expensive now.

Re:Put water in aluminum cans, no plastic bags

[Shotgun]

Funny how that plastic can sit on shelves and hot trucks for months without releasing toxins, but if you refill it and drink the water that day the concentration is high enough to be deadly.

Also, funny how the hawkers of a product that is nearly free but is packaged for several dollars a gallon don't want you using the free product.

Re:I get it...

[Solandri]

But isn't the BULK of ocean plastic waste pollution (90%+) coming from 10 rivers? (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plastic-tide-10-rivers-contribute-most-of-the-plastic-in-the-oceans/)

If you read the article you've linked carefully, those 10 rivers account for 93% of the plastic waste entering the oceans from rivers. But they only account for ~25% of all plastic waste entering the oceans. About 73% comes from sources other than rivers if I did my math right.

A recent study estimates that more than a quarter of all that waste could be pouring in from just 10 rivers, eight of them in Asia.

Not necessarily a bad thing

[Solandri]

itâ(TM)s thought that around 12% of all plastic waste has been incinerated, with roughly 79% accumulating in either landfill or the natural environment

Plastic originates from oil, and has the chemical form (C2H4)n for polyethelene, C2H3-x for PVC and polysyrene. When we bury it in a landfill, each C there is carbon which has been sequestered back underground, not combusted with atmospheric oxygen to produce CO2. In that respect, its resistance to biodegradation is a good thing, since it prevents bacteria in the landfill from converting it into CH4 (methane) and CO2. In a landfill locked in the form of plastic, that carbon is well and truly sequestered.

Unfortunately, TFA does not make a distinction between what percentage of plastic ends up in landfills, and what percentage in the natural environment. I'm also curious if the incineration process is high enough in temperature to yield atomic carbon (soot), or if it converts the carbon into CO2. I'm guessing the latter since that yields more energy, helping defray the cost of incineration.

Re:Other interesting statistics

[fustakrakich]

Alternately, 3/4 of all producers could be turned into Soylent green with zero negative impact to society.

Yeah, except for all the saturated fats and cholesterol and alcohol and antidepressants/opioids in their system that you'll be consuming. They should call it Soylent yellowish brown.