Humans have made more than 9 billion tons of plastic

In the classic film The Graduate, a family friend gives the protagonist an iconic piece of advice. “One word... plastics. There's a great future in plastics.” That advice couldn’t have been more prescient. Though the world hadn’t seen so much of as a plastic bag prior to about 1950, it is now awash in them. For the first time, scientists have calculated how much plastic humans have produced throughout history, and come up with a staggering figure: more than 9 billion tons (or 8.3 billion metric tons).

Humans have made more than 9 billion tons of plastic