To inform upcoming UN talks on reducing plastic waste, the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) has released a Global Plastics Outlook report. The news is not good; in the OECD's words, "Plastic pollution is growing relentlessly as waste management and recycling fall short."

The report is filled with some facts that you may already know—just 9% of plastic is successfully recycled—and straightens out some other areas where we may have been misled. For instance, plastic bag bans are a big step forward, right? Not really, the report finds:

While one can say all consumers and all manufacturers are complicit, the following line in the summary does mention a specific profession, members of whom happen to be Core77's target readership:

This is not to say that product designers are to blame for the mess. But it does indicate that it's one of the few professions in a direct position to help fix the problem.

If you're a product designer who's interested in crunching numbers, you can check out the Global Plastics Outlook Dataset to look at just the raw statistics.

For a more comprehensive (and comprehensible) overview, you can also read the full Global Plastics Outlook report online, for free. If it's something you need to download and circulate amongst members of your organization, you can purchase a PDF ($31) or a PDF and print version ($53) at that last link as well.

I’m a lapsed industrial designer. I was born in NYC and figured I’d die there, but a few years ago I abandoned New York to live on a farm in the countryside with my wife. We have six dogs.

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