8 Countries that Export the Most Plastic in the World

Wondering about the countries that export the most plastic in the world?  If you’ve kept up at all with the 3D printing craze that has swept through every corner of the developed world over the past few years, you’re certainly aware of the jaw-dropping creations being produced in printing laboratories.  Guns, bows, prosthetic limbs, shower heads, and even Pokemon-inspired planters have all found their way out of printers like unholy mutations batch-produced in Dr. Frankenstein’s lab.  One of the coolest things about these products is that they can be manufactured from an array of raw materials, ranging from wax and glass to steel or titanium.  Perhaps the most popular among these, however, is plastic.   

Commonly made from petrochemicals and renowned for its ability to be molded into innumerable shapes, sizes, and densities, plastic is everywhere you look.  Major contributors to this wonder material’s ubiquity are its relatively low cost, ability to withstand water, multifaceted capacity for use, and ease of production.  As a result of this, plastic has taken over as the material of choice in just about any aspect of life you can think of.  Present in objects such as space ships, cars, paper clips, cooking utensils, phones, medical equipment, and a laundry list of other objects, plastic has spent the past century replacing traditional production materials such as glass, metal, stone, wood, leather, ceramic, and just about any other compound out of which something can be manufactured.  

But the news about this omnipresent material isn’t all good.  As the world population soars and individual consumption continues its upward trajectory alongside it, a growing number of plastic materials are finding their way into places that they ought not be.  

Approximately 1500 plastic bottles are put in landfills or oceans each second.  Compounded, this and other refuse amounts to something on the order of 14 billion lbs, or 6.35 billion kilograms of trash being dumped into the ocean each year–much of which is plastic being offloaded by industrial boaters.  In addition to this, 1% of plastic-based trash finds its way to the ocean from sewers after being caught in strong currents known as gyres.  Research from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis estimates that there are 200 million tons of our trash floating around in the ocean, with 75,000 pieces of plastic floating on each square kilometer of the ocean’s surface.  This, however, doesn’t take into account any potential waste that lies beneath the surface.

All of this has culminated in what is effectively a land mass of trash known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch–an agglomeration of plastic and other waste products the size of Eastern Australia that has collected in the Pacific Ocean–which is estimated anywhere between 0.5 and 8.1 percent of the total area of the ocean’s surface.  Once the plastic settles into this accumulated mass, it can take anywhere from 500 to 1000 years for it to photo degrade via sunlight, making it prime “mistake bait” for all kinds of marine life.  

To get rid of this massive heap, experts maintain that we would need 630 clean up ships capable of holding 226 million kilograms of trash each.  More realistic approaches, however, suggest reducing individual plastic consumption and allowing what has already clustered in the ocean to float to shorelines where it can be cleaned up and removed.

Regardless of what action is ultimately taken, what’s clear is that attention needs to be paid to the world’s greatest plastic producers.  In developed countries, over 30% of plastic gets used in various components of buildings, such as plumbing, siding, and pipes, with another third being used merely for packaging.  This figure is even higher in the developing world with countries such as India reportedly contributing over 40% of its consumption to plastic packaging alone.

With this in mind, using reliable data on export statistics by country, we’ve amassed a list of the countries that export the most plastic in the world. This list isn’t meant to point any fingers, as we all bear responsibility in fixing this pollution endemic, but it is useful in taking a look at some of the countries that produce the most plastic in the world (as the biggest exporters of a product are usually among the biggest producers as well).  If you find yourself wanting to dig a bit deeper, why not also take a look at the Countries that Produce the Most Paper in the World.  At any rate, without further adieu, we bring you, the countries that export the most plastic in the world.

8. Mexico

$1.7 billion

2.6% of Total Exports

In January of 2017 alone, Mexico that ranks 8th in our list of countries that export the most plastic in the world has produced and exported over $14.5 million in plastic products.  Much of this comes from major producing companies such as Plasticos Herol and Osterman Plastics de Mexico, which cuts out the middleman and serves as a direct line between manufacturers and plastics producers throughout the country. This results in the production of a number of popular products, including Bose speakers–two manufacturing plants are located in Mexico–and made in Mexico (MIM) fender stratocaster guitars.

7. Hong Kong

$1.8 billion

2.8% of Total Exports

With Hong Kong’s plastic industry roots beginning in the post-WWII era as the result of mainlanders moving to the coast and major European and American investors opening branches in Hong Kong, the bustling city-state is no stranger to plastic production.  Famed for entrepreneurs, such as Li Ka-Shing, that built their respective fortunes on the manufacture of popular products such as plastic flowers, Hong Kong is one of the world’s major hotspots for plastic production.  Unfortunately, this has also led to large quantities of plastic–often up to 2,000 tonnes each day–being discarded improperly and generating significant waste in the city.

6. Taiwan

$1.9 billion

2.9% of Total Exports

Taiwan’s plastic production industry boasts over 700 different member corporations.  Chief among these are such industry giants as Formosa Plastics Group, which produces an array of intermediate plastics products, such as PVC.  In 2016, the company was ranked in the top half of Forbes’ 2000 largest public companies in the world, which does a lot to explain how Taiwan’s astronomical plastic export figures have become what they are today along with why they find themselves among the upper echelon of countries that export the most plastic in the world.  

5. France

$2.5 billion

3.5% of Total Exports

You know that you’re producing a lot of plastic when your government institutes a ban on all plastic cups, plates, and cutlery.  Such was the case for France, the number 5 in our list of countries that export the most plastic in the world, in late 2016, when the country rolled out ambitious environmentally-conscious regulations to ensure that such products are compostable by 2020.  With an overall industry value of $22.2 billion as of 2015, however, there is certainly no shortage of other plastic products coming out of the country’s factories, including the packaging use for the famed L’Occitane cosmetic line.

4. Italy

$2.6 billion

3.9% of Total Exports

Italy ranks 4th in our list of countries that export the most plastic in the world. It is home to some of the world’s most prominent brands.  From the chic eyewear of Luxottica, the world’s largest eyewear brand, and Indesit, a home appliances company, to the seemingly endless list of fashion brands ranging from Gucci and Prada to Versace and Armani.  All of these products, in some capacity or another, require plastic in their production.  Be it a box used to store and ship dried Barilla pasta, to the plastic, translucent bags that encase the hottest new designer item.  Even the eyewear produced at Luxottica relies on frames that are almost always made of plastic.  This massive reliance on plastic-based products makes it no mystery that Italy is one of the foremost countries that produce the most plastic in the world.

3. United States

$6.3 billion

9.5% of Total Exports

America’s third-largest industry, the plastics manufacturing trade employs nearly one million people in the US.  When you factor in plastics suppliers along with manufacturers, this number jolts to over 1.4 million plastics-related jobs overall.  Many of these jobs can be attributed to the ubiquity of injection molding and plastic manufacturing facilities–of which there are nearly 16,000–that can be found throughout the US.  With all of these factories, plastic production becomes a fairly straightforward process–a large reason for which nearly 108 billion pounds of plastics and resins were produced in 2013 alone in the US.

2. Germany

$7.8 billion

11.8% of Total Exports

As Europe’s largest producer and manufacturer of plastics, Germany’s plastics industry includes–but is not limited to–machine manufacturers, plastics and rubber recycling, processing and a number of other plastics-related operations.  The industry makes up more than six percent of the country’s domestic production, and has a profound impact on other major sectors in Germany’s economy, including packaging, electrical engineering, automotives, and many others. And now, let’s see the number one in our list of countries that export the most plastic in the world.

1. China

$18 billion

27.2% of Total Exports

“Made in China.”  Those three words have been as pervasive as any, and more pervasive than most with particular respect to the manufacturing industry.  The list of consumer goods, intermediate products and even raw materials that have come from and continue to be exported out of China is longer than this list allows for us to catalog.  From toys to clothing, and electronics to home goods, if your mind can conceive of it, China has produced and exported it.  In this vein, major industry players such as Yantai Huaguan Packaging Co. Ltd., Shenzhen Well Mold & Plastic Products Co. Ltd., China Raina Industry Co., Ltd., and Foshan Rifeng Enterprise Co. Ltd. have all acted as major contributors–through different means–to the massive plastics production industry for which China has become renowned, and by which China has been able to repeatedly claim the top spot among countries that export the most plastic in the world.