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Definition:
NOUN. an artificial substance that can be shaped when soft into many different forms and has many different uses

ADJ. made of plastic

Origin:
Latin (plasticus)
Greek (plastikos)

History:
1630s, “capable of shaping or molding,” “able to be molded, pertaining to molding, fit for molding,” also in reference to the arts, from plastos “molded, formed,” verbal adjective from plassein “to mold”. Main current meaning, “synthetic product made from oil derivatives,” first recorded 1909, coined by Leo Baekeland.

Definition:
VERB. to decay, or to cause something to decay

VERB. to break, or to break something, into smaller parts:

Origin:
French (decomposer)

History:
1750s, “to separate into components,” from de- “opposite of” + compose (v.) in the sense of “make or form by uniting two or more things.” Sense of “putrefy, become resolved into constituent elements” is by 1777.

Definition:
NOUN . all the plants, animals, and people living in an area considered together with their environment as a system of relationships

Origin:
French (eco-)
Late Latin (systema)
Greek (systema)

History:
The term ecosystem was coined in 1935, though ecosystems have been around as long as living things. Eco is a spin-off from the word ecology and describes anything having to do with the environment and our relation to it. You’ve probably heard of related terms like eco-friendly and eco-warrior. And system comes from the Greek word systema or “organized body, whole.”

Definition:
VERB. to sort and collect rubbish in order to treat them and produce useful materials that can be used again

VERB. to use something again for a different purpose:

Origin:
Latin (re-)
Old French (cicle)

History:
1922, originally of industrial processes. The origin of the phrase, “reduce, reuse, recycle”, is often debated. But it can be traced back to the underlying movement of becoming environmentally conscious in the 1970’s. This was during the time of the Vietnam War when Americans were demanding that air pollution, waste and water quality needed attention

Definition:
ADJ . used to refer to a product that can be used once and is then thrown away.

Origin:
Old French (sengle)
Latin (singulus)
Latin (usus)

History:
early 14c., “alone, unaccompanied; simple, unadorned,” “one, one to each, individual, separate” “one; as one, together with.” Meaning “consisting of one unit, individual, unaccompanied by others” is from late 14c.
c. 1200, “act of employing,” “custom, practice, usage,” “use, custom, practice, employment, skill, habit,” from past participle stem of uti “make use of, profit by, take advantage of”.

Plastic waste generation per person, 2010

In the chart we see the per capita rate of plastic waste generation, measured in kilograms per person per day. Here we see differences of around an order of magnitude: daily per capita plastic waste across the highest countries – Kuwait, Guyana, Germany, Netherlands, Ireland, the United States – is more than ten times higher than across many countries such as India, Tanzania, Mozambique and Bangladesh.

Note that these figures represent total plastic waste generation and do not account for differences in waste management, recycling or incineration. They therefore do not represent quantities of plastic at risk of loss to the ocean or other waterways.

Annual Plastic Production in 2015

The chart shows the increase of global plastic production, measured in tonnes per year, from 1950 through to 2015.

In 1950 the world produced only 2 million tonnes per year. Since then, annual production has increased nearly 200-fold, reaching 381 million tonnes in 2015. For context, this is roughly equivalent to the mass of two-thirds of the world population.3

The short downturn in annual production in 2009 and 2010 was predominantly the result of the 2008 global financial crisis — a similar dent is seen across several metrics of resource production and consumption, including energy.