Emergence of the age of microplastic in this developing world #wakeup

The first synthetic plastic – Bakelite – was produced in 1907 and this was marked as the start of the global plastics industry. However, rapid growth in global plastic production was not achieved until the 1950s. Over the next 65 years, the annual production of plastics has almost increased nearly more than 200 fold to 381 million tons in 2015 and if this rate of production persists then the figure will soon get doubled in the upcoming 20 years.
Plastics are lightweight, strong, durable, and cheap because of these characteristics, developing nations like China and India are highlighted when it comes to plastic production and plastic waste generation. Polymer type is also a very important factor that determines the growth of sectoral demand with respect to plastic producing industries.
A rapid increase in plastic emission clearly justifies that we are living in the “Plastic Age”. However, effective methods and technologies to deal with end-of-life plastic products have not been developed so efficiently. According to a recent study conducted in 2017, it was stated that only about 19.50% of plastic produced is recycled, 25.50% is incinerated, and the rest (55%) is discarded into the environment directly or indirectly (Geyer et al., 2017).