International Plastic Overshoot Day: Which countries are best at recycling the polluting material?

Today is International Plastic Overshoot Day: the point at which humans can no longer properly manage the plastic waste we produce annually.

For the first time, the day is being marked internationally by Swiss-based research consultancy Earth Action.

“Raising awareness is one of the goals, but empowerment and actionability are arguably even more important,” Sarah Perreard, co-CEO and stakeholder engagement lead at Earth Action, told Euronews Green.

“We don’t want to just educate people about this issue, we want the data and insights in our comprehensive report to act as a tool to drive forward the necessary changes needed.”

International Plastic Day aims to raise awareness of the world's harmful relationship with plastic and our struggles to adequately recycle it.

28 July is significant because it averages out every country in the world’s plastic management progress, calculating how much plastic they recycle compared with how much is ‘wasted’ or dumped.

Some are able to process much more plastic than others.

Denmark’s ‘overshoot day’ is 26 December because it is good at managing plastic waste. There are only four days where plastic is wasted in relation to the nation’s capacity to recycle it.

Nigeria’s ‘offshoot day’ is 3 January, meaning that for the rest of the year, plastic is simply not recycled or managed and will often be dumped into the environment.

Currently, according to Earth Action, 43 per cent of all plastic waste generated is mismanaged. That’s the equivalent of more than 68.5 million tonnes of plastic this year alone. This includes 420,000 tonnes of chemical additives released into waterways.

Over 40 per cent of the world’s population has, since 8 January 2023, been living in areas where the amount of plastic waste