The world is pumping out 57 million tons of plastic pollution a year

A new study finds that every year people create 57 million tons of plastic pollution. The material winds up everywhere from the deepest oceans to the highest peak of Mount Everest to inside people's body. More than two-thirds of it is in the Global South. Researchers at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom examined waste produced at the local level in more than 50,000 cities and towns for the work published in Wednesday's journal Nature. They looked at waste that gets into the open environment, rather than plastic that goes into landfills or gets burned properly. Outside experts worried that the study's focus on pollution, rather than growing plastic production, lets the plastics industry off the hook.