About Trashed.Earth

Trashed.Earth is a public awareness site about waste, pollution, and the pace at which we damage the planet. The homepage combines live statistics (counters that climb through the calendar year), short articles on causes and solutions, and curated links to researchers, NGOs, and policy trackers we find useful.

The goal is not to paralyse you with numbers — it is to make abstract scale feel immediate, then point toward action: cleaner habits, community cleanups, better policy, and support for organizations doing the work.

How the live counters work

None of the counters read sensors or live databases in real time. Each one is built from a published annual estimate — for example, how much plastic enters the ocean per year, or how much CO₂ fossil fuels emit — turned into a rate per second and multiplied by how much of 2026 has already elapsed.

1. Take a credible annual total from a named source (UNEP, Global Carbon Project, Pew, etc.).
2. Spread it evenly across the calendar year (365.25 days), so the number starts at zero on 1 January and reaches the full annual figure on 31 December.
3. Update the display continuously in your browser so the total always reflects year-to-date.

Real-world flows are lumpy — harvest seasons, economic shocks, wildfires, and fashion cycles create spikes and dips. A smooth average is a deliberate simplification so the scale is easy to read at a glance. Treat every counter as a proportional share of a published annual budget, not a verified live audit.

Per-stat methodology

Every live stat tile links to a dedicated article explaining what is included, what is excluded, where the annual figure comes from, and why we show it anyway. Use those pages when you need detail beyond this overview.

• Ocean plastic pollution — methodology ( Pew / SYSTEMIQ )
• Global CO₂ emissions — methodology ( Global Carbon Project )
• Food waste — methodology ( UNEP )
• Electronic waste — methodology ( UNEP )
• Fast fashion waste — methodology ( Ellen MacArthur Foundation )
• Plastic bottles — methodology ( The Guardian / Euromonitor )
• Species extinction — methodology ( IPBES )
• Trees cut down — methodology ( Nature / Crowther Lab )
• Landfill waste generated — methodology ( World Bank )
• Oil extracted — methodology ( U.S. EIA )
• Cigarette butts littered — methodology ( WHO )
• Plastic produced — methodology ( Plastics Europe )
• Garments produced — methodology ( Ellen MacArthur Foundation )
• Human methane emissions — methodology ( IEA )
• Ghost fishing gear lost — methodology ( Wilcox et al. )

Editorial articles and external links

Articles on the grid (greenwashing, fast fashion, action guides, and similar) are written for this site to add context around the numbers. Link tiles open trusted external sites — data portals, UN agencies, cleanup NGOs, legal nonprofits, and policy trackers. A link is curation, not an endorsement of every position those organizations take.

Donations and contact

If you want to fund cleanups and related work, see the donate page. For partnerships or corrections to our figures, email hello@trashed.earth. We update annual rates when major source reports change; methodology articles note the reasoning behind each figure.