The worldwide plastic problem 遍及全球的塑料污染問題

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How many people in the global south have no access to formal waste collection?

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It is everywhere because it’s almost endlessly useful. And when it’s thrown away, if plastic finds its way into a plant like this, a lot of it can be made into something useful all over again.

塑料無處不在，因為它的用途幾乎是無窮無盡的。當塑料被丟棄後，如果被運到瞭像這樣的廢物處理廠，大量的塑料垃圾就可以被重新制成有用的東西。

But every year more and more plastic waste ends up here. And a global team of scientists has now tracked the production and disposal of plastic all around the world and used that information to forecast the scale of our plastic pollution problem for the next 20 years.

但每年都有越來越多的塑料垃圾流入海洋。一支由多國科學傢組成的團隊現已追蹤瞭世界各地塑料的生產和處理情況，並用這些信息預測瞭未來20年塑料污染問題的嚴重性。

Dr Costas Velis, University of Leeds
If you were to count all together all the plastic waste that is going to be released into the environment both on land and reaching the seas, these would be the staggering number of 1.3 billion tonnes of plastic.

科斯塔斯·韋利斯博士利茲大學
“如果你把將排放到陸地和海洋環境中的所有塑料垃圾都算上，就會得出13億噸塑料垃圾的驚人數字。”

Victoria Gill, AYYBLOG science correspondent
1.3 billion tonnes is so big of a number it’s almost unimaginable. How can you even visualise how much waste that is?

維多莉婭·吉爾 AYYBLOG科學通訊員
“13億噸是一個大得幾乎難以想象的數字。人們怎樣才能想象這到底是多少塑料垃圾呢？”

Dr Costas Velis, University of Leeds
If you were to spread these on a thin layer of land, it would be 1.5 times the size of the UK.

科斯塔斯·韋利斯博士利茲大學
“如果你把這些塑料垃圾薄薄地鋪在平地上，它的總面積相當於英國領土面積的1.5倍。”

Household waste, the scientists say, is by far the biggest source of all this pollution. They calculated that every year 30 million tonnes is dumped on land; nearly 50 million tonnes is burned out in the open, and that’s in addition to the 10 million tonnes that finds its way into our oceans.

科學傢們表示，目前，生活垃圾是塑料污染的最大來源。他們計算出，每年有3000萬噸塑料被傾倒在陸地上，近5000萬噸在露天被焚燒，此外還有1000萬噸流入海洋。

Many of us might do our bit with reusable water bottles and coffee cups. But there’s an estimated two billion people in the global south who have no access to any formal waste collection – they’re simply left to work out what to do with all their rubbish.

我們中的許多人也許會盡一己之力，用可重復使用的水瓶和咖啡杯。但據估算，在全球南方的發展中國傢，有20億人沒有任何規范的垃圾收集渠道，他們隻能自己想辦法處理所有的垃圾。

Providing protection and safe employment for workers in low-income countries who collect and sort all of that waste will be just as important globally as reducing the production of single-use plastic. And while these new figures are daunting, the researchers say that recognising the source and the scale of this problem is the first step in stemming the worldwide tide of plastic pollution.

在全球范圍內，為低收入國傢收集和分類垃圾的勞動者們提供保護和安全就業環境，將與減少一次性塑料的生產同等重要。盡管這些新數據看起來令人生畏，但研究人員表示，認識到塑料污染問題的根源和規模是遏制全球塑料污染浪潮的第一步。