Garbage in, guilt out.

01Almost none of it reaches the ocean.

26x.

One river in Manila puts 26 times more plastic into the ocean than every US river combined.^1,2

The US is a quarter of one percent of the plastic rivers carry to the ocean

Source: Meijer et al. 2021, Science Advances, 2015 estimates

Data

Country	Tonnes a year	Share
Philippines	356,371	36.4%
India	126,513	12.9%
Malaysia	73,098	7.5%
China	70,707	7.2%
Indonesia	56,333	5.8%
Brazil	37,799	3.9%
Vietnam	28,221	2.9%
Bangladesh	24,640	2.5%
Thailand	22,806	2.3%
Nigeria	18,640	1.9%
United States	2,431	0.25%

US rivers carry about 2,400 tonnes of plastic to the ocean a year: 0.25% of the world total, about 7 grams per American.^2,3

The river model leaves out US plastic shipped abroad. Even counted at worst case, the US stays under 2% of the world total, and the Pasig alone is still nearly 4 times the whole US.^3,4,5 The 26x figure above counts US rivers only.

An American's yearly 7 g is less than one 8 g grocery bag

Sources: Meijer et al. 2021; bag weight from UK Environment Agency

What would help the ocean?

Waste collection where it is missing.

Mismanaged plastic per person in the Philippines is 84 times the UK's.⁷

All the numbersExports, the factsheet, methods and sources

Exports

Stat	Source
US plastic scrap exports, 2024: 903M lb (about 410,000 tonnes)	Resource Recycling
55% went to Canada and Mexico; 28% to India, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia	Same; shares calculated
Method: treat every tonne sent to Mexico and those four countries (about 202,000 t) as mismanaged, with 1% to 7% reaching the sea	Bounds from Our World in Data
Result: exports add 2,000 to 14,100 t, so the US total is 4,400 to 16,600 t a year, 0.45% to 1.7% of the world's	Calculation
The Pasig River alone is still 3.8 to 14 times the US total, exports included	Calculation
Context: world plastic waste trade fell about two-thirds after 2010, and China stopped taking it in 2018	Our World in Data

Factsheet

Stat	Source
US: 2,431 tonnes a year enter the ocean from rivers (2015)	Meijer et al. 2021, Science Advances, country data
Per American: about 7 g a year, less than one 8 g grocery bag	2,431 t / 328M people (2019); bag weight from UK Environment Agency
Per person: Philippines 3.2 kg a year; Europe under 0.1 kg	Meijer et al. 2021 country data, per person (2019 population)
Asia: 81% of global inputs	Sum of Asian countries in Meijer et al. 2021
Marine sources (fishing gear, ropes, abandoned vessels): 20 to 30% of ocean plastic by weight. Lines, ropes and nets are 52% of the plastic mass in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch	Patch: Lebreton et al. 2018, Scientific Reports. 20 to 30% range: Our World in Data

How we calculated

A model of plastic over 0.5 cm reaching the sea through rivers (Meijer et al. 2021).⁸ The paper puts each river's estimate within a factor of 4 (68% confidence), so a river estimated at 100 tonnes could plausibly be 25 to 400. It excludes waste shipped abroad and microplastics.

Common objections

What would help the ocean?

Waste collection where it is missing. Mismanaged plastic per person in the Philippines is 84 times the UK's (Meijer et al. 2021 data).

Sources

02What gets buried takes up almost no room.

Twin bed.

Your lifetime of trash, buried, takes up less floor space than a twin bed.^11,12

One American's lifetime of trash, buried 100 ft deep, covers about 15 sq ft: less than a twin bed.^11,12,13

Burned like Japan, it shrinks to about 2.5 sq ft, under a 2 x 3 ft doormat.¹⁴ A full year of US landfilled trash fits on Golden Gate Park (1,017 acres), piled about 144 ft high.^12,15

Modern landfills are sealed, drained and monitored.

New York reviewed 31 lined landfills built after 1988 and found no groundwater harm from leaks through their liners.¹⁶

About 58% of landfill methane comes from food waste; plastic does not rot. The fix is food scraps, not plastic.¹⁷

All the numbersThe factsheet, methods, objections and sources

Factsheet

Stat	Source
US, 2018: 292.4M tons generated; 146.1M landfilled (50%); 34.6M burned for energy (11.8%)	EPA
Per American: about 890 lb landfilled a year, about 19 cu ft	Calculation
Per lifetime (79 years): about 1,540 cu ft, less than one one-car garage (12 x 20 x 8 ft)	Calculation
Footprint at 100 ft deep: about 15 sq ft; a twin bed is 20 sq ft (38 x 75 in)	Calculation
Burned like Japan, it shrinks to about 2.5 sq ft, under a 2 x 3 ft doormat. Japan sends 8.0% of its waste to final disposal (2024); the US landfills 50%. Safety of burning: see below	Japan Ministry of the Environment
A full year of US landfilled trash fits on Golden Gate Park (1,017 acres), piled about 144 ft high	SF Recreation and Parks; calculation
Landfills cover about 0.01% of US land	EPA landfill data, via Works in Progress

How we calculated

Density: 0.62 short tons per cu yd, the compacted density in one Pennsylvania landfill's filing; EPA landfill data put the median near 0.64. At the 1997 national average of 0.37 (739 lb per cu yd), the footprint would be 26 sq ft.
Depth: 100 ft is the median design depth of open US landfills in EPA's landfill data. Life: 79 years, US life expectancy in 2024 (CDC).
Japan scaling uses tonnage (6.2x less). Ash is denser than raw trash, so the real volume is smaller.

Common objections

Don't landfills leak?

New York reviewed 31 lined landfills built after 1988 (27 municipal, 4 hazardous waste), about 450 years of combined operation, and found no groundwater harm from leaks through their liners (National Academies).

What about methane?

Municipal landfills produce 14.4% of US methane (EPA, 2022). About 58% of it comes from food waste (EPA); plastic does not rot. Aerial surveys found landfills emit 1.4 to 2.7 times the methane they report to EPA (Cusworth et al. 2024). The fix is food scraps, not plastic.

Are we running out of space?

The US has about 62 years of capacity in its current landfills, by a 2015 EREF estimate (Waste360). Shortages are regional and come from permitting, not a lack of land.

Isn't burning trash toxic?

Not with modern controls. From 1990 to 2005, US waste combustors cut dioxin emissions by over 99% (4,400 to 15 g TEQ a year), mercury by 96% and lead by 97% (EPA). EPA says fossil-fuel power plants produce most US mercury and particulate pollution (same source, 2005 data). Copenhagen's CopenHill plant burned 610,000 t of waste in 2024, supplied electricity for about 99,000 homes and heat for about 92,000, and has a public ski slope on its roof (ARC annual report 2024). Its climate cost is already counted in the climate section: burning is the 3.08 kg CO2 per kg line.

Sources

03Your plastic's climate cost is small.

3x.

Your dog has 3 times the climate footprint of your plastic.^27,28 You don't sweat the kibble. Don't sweat the bag.

A year of your plastic, 130 to 250 kg of CO2e, is the smallest line here

Sources: Berners-Lee; Edinburgh; USDA ERS; Poore and Nemecek 2018; Shaka Guide; EPA; DESNZ; how we calculated

Data

Item	kg CO2
Your plastic, a year	130 to 250
Cheese, a year	435
A dog, a year	530 to 770
5 drives to Tahoe	760 to 880
London round trip	1,195

A year of one American's single-use plastic emits about 130 to 250 kg of CO2e, roughly 0.7 to 1.3% of a typical US footprint.^28,35,36

An American throws away about 53 kg of single-use plastic a year.³⁷ So: 130 kg a year if all buried, 250 kg if all burned.

Pound for pound, plastic is gasoline.

Burning a pound of polyethylene emits the same CO2 as burning a pound of gasoline, 3.08 vs 3.07 kg per kg.^35,38 A year of your plastic, 130 to 250 kg CO2e, equals 15 to 28 gallons of gas at 8.887 kg per gallon: one or one and a half drives to Tahoe and back.³³ Rule of thumb: weigh your plastic, and picture that weight in gasoline.

Uses needed to match one plastic grocery bag

Bag	Climate only	All environmental impacts
Paper	0 to 1	43
Woven plastic tote	5	45
Cotton tote	52	7,100
Organic cotton tote	149	20,000

Baseline: a standard 24 g supermarket plastic bag, reused once as a bin liner. Cotton's all-category figure is driven by ozone depletion; without it, 50 to 1,400 uses (organic cotton: 150 to 3,800). Source: Danish Environmental Protection Agency 2018, LCA of grocery carrier bags, Table IV.

All the numbersThe ledger, methods, objections and sources

The ledger

Per kg of plastic: making it, +2.5 kg CO2e; burning it, +3.08; electricity recovered from burning, minus 0.86; net 4.7 kg CO2e if burned, 2.5 kg if buried.^35,40 An American throws away about 53 kg of single-use plastic a year.³⁷ So: 130 kg a year if all buried, 250 kg if all burned. Every input is sourced below; polyethylene values are used throughout.

Line	Figure	Source
Make: resin	1.68 kg CO2e per kg (virgin HDPE, 1.52 t per short ton)	EPA WARM v16, Plastics, Exhibit 5-7
Make: forming it into products	Adds 49% on top of resin (global conversion 535 Mt vs resin 1,085 Mt CO2e, 2015). 1.68 x 1.49 = 2.5	Zheng and Suh 2019, Nature Climate Change
Burn	3.08 kg CO2 per kg (86% carbon, 98% oxidized)	EPA WARM v16, Exhibit 5-17
Energy back	2.3 kWh per kg (40.0 MMBtu per short ton at 17.8% plant efficiency) x 0.373 kg CO2 per kWh = 0.86	EPA WARM v16, Exhibit 5-18; grid factor 823.1 lb per MWh, EPA eGRID2022
Bury	0.02 kg per kg (trucks only; plastic makes no methane)	EPA WARM v16, Exhibit 5-19
Use	53 kg single-use plastic waste per American, 2019	Minderoo Foundation, Plastic Waste Makers Index 2021

Burned, a kg of plastic nets 4.7 kg of CO2e; buried, 2.5 kg

Source: EPA WARM v16; Zheng and Suh 2019; EPA eGRID2022

Data

Step	kg CO2 per kg
Make	+2.5
Burn	+3.08
Energy back	−0.86
Net	4.7

Pound for pound, plastic is gasoline

Burning a pound of polyethylene emits the same CO2 as burning a pound of gasoline, 3.08 vs 3.07 kg per kg (EPA WARM v16, Exhibit 5-17; IPCC 2006 defaults: 69,300 kg CO2 per TJ x 44.3 TJ per thousand t). Counting manufacture, a pound of plastic is 0.8x (buried) to 1.5x (burned) a pound of gasoline at the tailpipe.

How we calculated

Greenhouse gases in CO2e on both sides; the burning, driving and flight lines are almost all CO2.

Flight: 8,630 km each way x 0.069 kg per passenger-km, the UK government's 2025 long-haul economy factor without contrail effects (DESNZ).
Tahoe: 190 to 220 miles each way (Shaka Guide) x 0.4 kg per mile (EPA) x 5 trips.
Dog: 770 kg for an average-sized dog (Mike Berners-Lee) and 530 kg for its food alone, with a different way of splitting meat emissions between pet and human food (Edinburgh).
Cheese: 40.15 lb per person in 2023 (USDA ERS) x 23.88 kg CO2e per kg (Poore and Nemecek 2018, Science).
US footprint: 18,990 kg CO2e per person, gross emissions in 2022 (EPA inventory).

WARM covers resin only, so the 49% for forming products comes from the global study. Zheng and Suh's global average, about 4.0 kg per kg to make on coal-heavy grids, would raise the burned case to 330 kg; that is still under the dog's low estimate of 530. WARM credits burning against marginal power plants (1.68 per kg); we use the average grid, which is less favorable to burning. On EPA's current marginal rate, the burned case would be 218 kg.

The card's "3x" uses the dog's high estimate (770 kg) against the burned plastic (250 kg). The chart shows the full ranges.

Common objections

Isn't plastic made from oil?

Yes. Drilling, refining and manufacturing are all inside the 2.5 kg production figure.

Sources

04Recycling plastic barely helps.

76%.

Three quarters of US plastic goes to landfill.⁴²

Even PET, the most recycled plastic, is at 18.5%

Source: EPA 2018 data, in Greenpeace 2022, Table A-3

Data

Type	Recycled, 2018
PET (#1)	18.5%
HDPE (#2)	8.9%
LDPE (#4)	4.3%
PS (#6)	0.9%
PP (#5)	0.6%
PVC (#3)	0.0%

Under 10% of US plastic is recycled; aluminum cans are the bin item with by far the largest climate payoff per pound.^35,42

Recycling mid-grade plastic costs an estimated $1,000 or more per tonne of CO2 avoided; direct air capture sells for about $490 on average.^18,44

The one thing worth rinsing: cans.

About 0.13 kg of CO2e saved per can, so roughly 1,900 cans equal a year of single-use plastic.^28,35,45

So should I stop recycling?

For plastic, yes.

About three quarters of it is landfilled anyway, recycling it costs an estimated $900 or more per ton of CO2 avoided, and a year of it is under 2% of your footprint. Keep rinsing cans: each one saves about 0.3 lb of CO2e.^18,28,35,42

All the numbersThe factsheet and sources

Factsheet

Stat	Source
US plastic, 2018: 35.7M tons; 3.1M recycled (8.7%), 5.6M burned for energy, 27M landfilled	EPA, Plastics: Material-Specific Data
By 2021 the rate was about 5%, by estimate: 2.4M of 51M tons	Last Beach Cleanup and Beyond Plastics, cited by Greenpeace
Recycled, 2018: PET (#1) 18.5%, HDPE (#2) 8.9%, types #3 to #7 under 5%	EPA data, in Greenpeace 2022, Table A-3
About 17% of what goes into US curbside recycling is contamination	The Recycling Partnership
Recycling mid-grade plastic costs an estimated $1,000 or more per tonne of CO2 avoided; direct air capture sells for about $490 on average	Estimate: Works in Progress; price: WRI
Recycling a short ton of aluminum cans instead of landfilling saves 9.15 t CO2e, about 0.13 kg per can	EPA WARM v16, Exhibit 2-7; per-can figure assumes a 13 g can (Aluminum Association)
Recycling programs' own advice: when in doubt, throw it out	EPA

Data

Where US plastic went, 2018	Million tons
Landfill	27.0
Burned for energy	5.6
Recycled	3.1

Exports

Factsheet

How we calculated

Common objections

What would help the ocean?

Sources

Sources

Factsheet

How we calculated

Common objections

Don't landfills leak?

What about methane?

Are we running out of space?

Isn't burning trash toxic?

Sources

Sources

The ledger

Pound for pound, plastic is gasoline

How we calculated

Common objections

Isn't plastic made from oil?

Sources

Sources

Factsheet

Sources

Sources

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