Year 2026Streams split at the plant, ocean total accumulates below
This 2D companion to the 3D global plastic mass-balance simulator drives the identical model — annual production splitting into recycled, landfilled, incinerated and ocean-leaked streams, with the ocean total accumulating year after year — but renders it as a flat, flowing Sankey-style diagram with a live time chart underneath instead of an orbitable 3D scene. Raise the recycling rate or lower the mismanaged-waste fraction and the blue leak lane visibly thins while the ocean-total curve below flattens; raise the production growth rate and every lane, including leakage, swells even as the recycling percentage stays fixed. Live readouts track simulated years, annual production, the ocean leak rate and the cumulative ocean plastic total, calibrated to the same widely reported 2026 baseline as the 3D version: ~380 million tons produced per year, ~11 million tons leaking to the ocean annually, ~150 million tons already afloat, a 9% global recycling rate and a 2.9% mismanaged-waste fraction.