Published 2026-05-22 · data 2017 · percent of cumulative plastic
Half of all plastic was made since 2005
Petrochemicals turned oil into packaging. Cumulative production passed one billion tonnes.
Plastic feels like a 20th-century problem, but the ledger says otherwise: half of all the plastic ever made was produced after 2005. Petrochemical plants turned cheap oil into packaging so fast that about a decade of output outweighs everything made in the decades before it.
1 cell = 0.1 percent of cumulative plastic (0.1% of all plastic ever made) · 1,000 cells
Context
The 51/49 split comes from a landmark global accounting of plastic production, published by Geyer and colleagues in Science Advances in 2017. Tracking polymers from the industry's earliest years onward, the study found that more than half of everything ever made came off production lines after 2005.
Plastic is petrochemistry's consumer face: feedstocks drawn from oil and gas are cracked into polymers, and much of the output becomes short-lived packaging. Cumulative production has passed one billion tonnes, and demand for new polymers has kept climbing.
The newer band is a floor, not a peak: as long as production continues, every additional tonne lands on the 'since 2005' side of the grid. Waste systems built for a slower era are absorbing a material that accumulates far faster than it leaves use.
Geyer et al. Science Advances 2017: >50% of polymers produced since 2005.
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Credit this grid as Inagrid — https://inagrid.com/e/2026-05-22-plastic-production