Plastic film usage and mulching area from 1992 to 2022

Agricultural plastic mulch films are a major source of plastic pollution of croplands. In China, which uses about 68% of the plastic mulch film produced globally (ca. 1.4 million tonnes y-1), soils have been heavily contaminated with mulch fragments. Here, we collected a national dataset of macroplastic residues (> 5 mm) in soil, including 3145 sampling sites, and provincial plastic film usage from 1992 to 2019 in China, and we established a linear model between the residue amount and historical cumulative usage within each province. We quantified the amount of plastic mulch residues in Chinese croplands on a national scale during the past 30 years and predicted plastic pollution until 2050. Our results reveal the total national amount of plastic mulch residue in 2020 to be 2.07 million tonnes with a 95% CI of [1.67, 2.58]. This accumulated amount of plastic in Chinese soils roughly equals the annual amount of plastic films used globally (2.08 million tonnes in 2018), which is about ..., , # Plastic film usage and mulching area from 1992 to 2022

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.6hdr7srcd](10.5061/dryad.6hdr7srcd)

## Description of the data and file structure

The dataset is mainly used to understand the temporal and spatial distribution of plastic film use and residue in China.

Each row of the Excel represents the plastic film usage and mulching area for each province in China from 1992 to 2022, while each column indicates the data for a specific year regarding plastic film usage or mulching area for all provinces.

In Data S2, the concentration of some mulch film residues is marked in red text as \"The providers do not agree to release\" because the providers of this part of the data do not agree to make it public. If you need it, you can apply to us for access. We will decide whether to share this part of the data after discussion.

### Files and variables

#### File: Data\_S1.zip

**Description:** Data S1 includes data on the usage (thousand tonnes) and mulching area (tho...,