The world is flooded with plastic garbage.
在我們的世界，塑料垃圾已經泛濫成災。

There will be more plastic than fish in terms of weight in the world's oceans by 2050, the World Economic Forum warned Tuesday.
1月19日，世界經濟論壇發出警告：到2050年，世界各大海洋中的塑料垃圾總重量將超過海中魚類。

Plastic has become one of the world's most popular materials, combining amazing functionality and very low production costs. Its use has increased 20-fold in the past 50 years and is expected to double again in the next 20 years.
塑料制品應用廣泛、造價低廉，在世界各地都廣受人們歡迎。過去五十年中，塑料使用量增長了20倍，并且有望在接下來的20年里再翻一番。

Almost everybody in the world comes into contact with it -- over a quarter of all plastic is used for packaging, the most popular use of the material.
塑料制品中最受歡迎的當屬塑料袋了，超過四分之一的塑料最終都制成了各種袋子。日常生活中，幾乎每個人都要用到它。

But only 14% of plastic packaging is collected for recycling. The reuse rate is terrible compared to other materials -- 58% of paper and up to 90% of iron and steel gets recycled.
但是，全球只有14%的塑料袋得以回收利用。紙張再用率為58%，而鋼鐵的循環使用率可高達90%，相較于這些資源，塑料的再使用情況則相當糟糕。

It gets worse. Almost a third of all plastic packaging escapes collection systems and ends up in nature or clogging up infrastructure.
眼下，情況變得越來越糟了。近三分之一的塑料袋無法回收，要么堵在了城市基礎設施的某個角落，要么在自然界中“自生自滅”。

"After a short first-use cycle, 95% of plastic packaging material value, or $80 billion to $120 billion annually, is lost to the economy," the WEF said in a report.
世界經濟論壇在其報告中指出：“塑料袋的首次使用周期很短，由于再用率低下，95%的塑料袋都白白浪費掉了，造成的經濟損失每年高達800億至1200億美元。”

The report is based on interviews with over 180 experts and on analysis of over 200 reports.
這份報告是在采訪了180多名專家，并對200多份報告進行了大量分析后提出的。

They estimate that by 2050, the amount of plastics produced globally will increase three times to 1,124 million tons. By then, the "plastic economy" will take up 15% of the world's global carbon budget, compared to just 1% today.
據預計，2050年全球塑料產量將增加三倍，高達11.24億噸。屆時，“塑料經濟”將占有全球碳預算15%的份額，而目前其份額僅為1%。

The so-called carbon budget is the total amount of carbon dioxide the world can pump into the atmosphere while still having a chance of stopping short of 2 degrees of global warming.
所謂的“碳預算”是指全球排放到大氣中的二氧化碳總量的上限，以保證還有機會將全球變暖的增幅遏制在兩攝氏度內。

The forum said the only way to avoid a disaster is to massively improve the economics and uptake of recycling. That means giving people incentives to collect plastic garbage and recycle, use reusable packaging, and encourage countries to drastically improve their waste collection infrastructure, to avoid plastic garbage leaking into the nature.
該論壇發表聲明說，避免這一災難的唯一途徑就是大力改善經濟結構，提高循環使用率。這意味著激勵人們去回收并循環使用塑料垃圾，使用可重復使用的包裝袋，鼓勵各國大力改善廢物回收設施，以防止塑料垃圾排放到自然環境中。

英文來源：CNN
譯者：孫慧
審校&編輯：丹妮