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June 12, 2024 Graphics/Design:

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Ranked: Top 20 Countries by Plastic Waste per Capita

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Single-use plastic waste is perhaps one of the biggest environmental issues of our time. Every year, millions of tons of plastic end up in oceans and landfills, harming wildlife and ecosystems.

To make matters worse, plastics take hundreds of years to decompose, leading to long-term environmental and health hazards as they break down into microplastics that contaminate water and food sources.

In this graphic, we visualized the top 20 countries that generated the most single-use plastic waste per capita in 2019, measured in kilograms per person. Figures come from research published in May 2021, which we sourced from Statista.

Data and Key Takeaways

The data we used to create this graphic is listed in the table below.

RankCountryKg per personPounds per person 1🇸🇬 Singapore76168 2🇦🇺 Australia59130 3🇴🇲 Oman56123 4🇳🇱 Netherlands55121 5🇧🇪 Belgium55121 6🇮🇱 Israel55121 7🇭🇰 Hong Kong55121 8🇨🇭 Switzerland53117 9🇺🇸 U.S.53117 10🇦🇪 UAE52115 11🇨🇱 Chile51112 12🇰🇷 S. Korea4497 13🇬🇧 UK4497 14🇰🇼 Kuwait4088 15🇳🇿 New Zealand3986 16🇮🇪 Ireland3986 17🇫🇮 Finland3884 18🇯🇵 Japan3782 19🇫🇷 France3679 20🇸🇮 Slovenia3577

Countries from all around the world are present in this ranking, highlighting how plastic waste isn’t concentrated in any one region.

It’s also interesting to note how most of the countries in this top 20 ranking are wealthier, more developed nations. These nations have higher levels of consumption, with greater access to packaged goods, take-out services, and disposable products, all of which rely on single-use plastics.

Where’s China and India?

Note that we’ve visualized plastic waste per capita, which is different from the total amount of waste produced by a country. It is for this reason that major polluters, such as China and India, are not present in this ranking.

It’s also worth noting that this