Many of us will have seen the stark images of plastic in the ocean: bottles and wrappers clumped together, or rubbish trapped along the coastline. But how much of the world’s plastic waste ends up in the ocean?

In 2020, Gapminder asked people in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and the UK this question. They had three options to choose from:

• A) Less than 1%
• B) Less than 36%
• C) Less than 66%

Almost nine in ten people picked B or C, thinking it was more than one-third.

The correct answer was A: around 0.5% of plastic waste ends up in the ocean.

The chart shows how the OECD gets to this number. Globally, we produce around 350 million tonnes of plastic waste a year. Most of this is managed responsibly, either in secure landfills, through recycling, or incineration. But around one-quarter of it is mismanaged or littered.

From there, a decreasing fraction of plastic waste leaks to the environment, then into rivers and coastlines, and finally into the ocean. Around 1.7 million tonnes end up there: around 0.5% of what was generated in the first place.

People tend to think that most of our plastic ends up there, but only a tiny percentage does. This should make plastic pollution an easier problem to solve: we already know how to manage most of it well. The challenge is to ensure that all plastic is handled this way.