What the Numbers Mean

With the defaults (5 bottles, 3 bags, 10 wrappers, 2 containers weekly), the pile weighs 280 g/week — 14.6 kg per year (Average). At that pace, 60 years of habits adds up to about 874 kg of plastic, mostly from bottles (1.3 kg/week) and wrappers (0.8 kg/week).

Weight Assumptions

Per-item weights are averages: a PET bottle ~25 g, shopping bag ~5 g, food wrapper ~8 g, takeout container ~30 g, straw ~0.5 g. Only about 9% of plastic is ever recycled — the rest persists for centuries as it breaks into microplastics.