How much plastic waste still goes to landfill, incineration, or the environment globally and in the U.S. in 2025?
This fact-check may be outdated. Consider refreshing it to get the most current information.
Executive summary
Global plastic production in 2024–2025 is roughly 400–445 million tonnes per year and most of that waste is not recycled: about 9% recycled, roughly half goes to landfill globally, and around a quarter is “mismanaged” so at risk of entering the environment [1] [2]. In the United States recent reporting and analyses put recycling at single‑digit percentages (around 5–9%), with the large majority of U.S. plastic waste sent to landfill and a small share incinerated [2] [3] [4].
1. Global scale: production, waste and where it goes
Multiple 2024–2025 reports converge on the headline that annual plastic production sits near 400–445 Mt and annual plastic waste generation is in the high hundreds of millions of tonnes; only about 9% of plastic has ever been recycled and roughly half of plastic waste is landfilled worldwide [1] [2]. Our World in Data summarizes the global end‑of‑life mix as dominated by landfill, with incineration and recycling far smaller, and roughly one‑quarter of waste counted as mismanaged—meaning it’s not recycled, incinerated, or in secure landfill and therefore likely to leak into rivers, coasts and oceans [2]. These high‑level shares are consistent with OECD and other syntheses noting landfilling remains the leading disposal route globally [1] [5].
2. What “mismanaged” and “leakage” mean — and how big that pool is
Researchers use “mismanaged plastic waste” to capture dumpsites, open burning and uncollected litter that can escape into the environment; projections and country‑level models put global mismanaged waste in the tens of millions of tonnes annually, meaning a material fraction of produced plastic reaches ecosystems rather than formal waste streams [6] [7] [2]. UNEP and other agencies estimate annual leakage to aquatic systems at roughly 19–23 million tonnes, underscoring that a substantial but not majority portion of total waste is entering rivers and oceans each year [8].
3. The U.S. picture: most plastic is landfilled, recycling is tiny
U.S.-focused sources in 2024–2025 report that only single‑digit percentages of U.S. plastic waste are recycled — figures cited range from about 5% to 9% — while the overwhelming share is landfilled and a smaller slice is incinerated with energy recovery [2] [3] [4]. The Conversation, citing U.S. analyses, states about 5% recycled, 9% incinerated and 86% landfilled, a distribution that mirrors long‑running EPA and academic assessments showing landfilling dominates U.S. disposal practices [4] [9].
4. Regional differences and where incineration matters
Incineration is concentrated in Europe and some high‑income countries; the global average therefore masks strong regional variation [2] [5]. OECD and academic work document a shift in some jurisdictions from landfill toward incineration plus low rates of recycling, but the aggregate global story remains that landfill is the largest single fate [1] [10].
5. Why headline shares vary between sources
Different groups use varying baselines (total plastic produced, annual waste generated, or “plastic ever produced”), different years, and different definitions (e.g., “mismanaged” versus “leakage” versus “not recycled”), which explains apparent inconsistencies: one paper cites cumulative global plastic waste exceeding 1 billion tonnes by 2025 whereas annual production/waste statistics are in the 400‑445 Mt/year range [11] [12] [1]. Methodological choices drive different public numbers; the underlying agreement is that only a small share is recycled and a large share goes to landfill or to insecure management [2] [1].
6. Policy context and recent negotiation politics
Global negotiations on a plastics treaty have been active into 2025; some reports emphasize that production caps and stricter controls were resisted by producer‑state blocs and that delegates could not finalize language in August 2025, which matters because without limits on production the volumes requiring waste management will keep rising [11] [13]. OECD and WRI analyses stress that downstream measures (recycling infrastructure, bans, extended producer responsibility) matter, but that many countries lack the capacity to prevent mismanagement now [14] [15].
7. What sources do not say or resolve
Available sources do not provide a single, exact 2025 global percentage split of landfill vs incineration vs environmental leakage for the year 2025 with universally agreed numeric precision; instead they provide consistent direction: low recycling (~9%), high landfilling (about half of waste globally, and far higher in the U.S.), and tens of millions of tonnes mismanaged and leaking annually [2] [1] [8]. Exact U.S. 2025 tons to each fate are not stated uniformly across these sources [9] [4].
8. Bottom line and where to look next
For practical use: treat the 9% recycled / ~50% landfilled / ~25% mismanaged framing as a robust, evidence‑backed shorthand for global 2025 conditions, with the U.S. skewing more heavily to landfills and only single‑digit recycling rates [2] [1] [4]. For precise tonnage splits in 2025, consult the OECD Global Plastics Outlook, UNEP country inventories, and EPA material‑specific data — the sources above summarize the consensus patterns but stop short of a single authoritative annual allocation table for 2025 [1] [8] [9].