...but we need more satellites!
creates more space debris

Kessler Effect? not my problem

Visualizing this graph as a stacked graph isn't helping. It should either be a line graph with 2 lines or bar graph with 2 columns per year. The version shown makes it incredibly hard to tell that the non-functional parts didn't really increase in the last year's. I think. As I said it's pretty hard to tell ...

Stacked graph works to show total objects in space. Which the main concern, since they all need to play nice and avoid collisions.

Flipping the more consistent trend (junk parts) with the payload parts would have read better however.

I hope you don’t live near an airport or shipping lane.

Not to mention that this simplifies the problem so massively that its almost a pointless metric.

This is like analysing traffic jams by counting the number of registered cars.

Sure there is a correlation but not a very meaningful one.

Don't get me wrong this problem is an important one, no arguments there, but this says nothing about collision risks (in certain orbits of which most don't impact each other) or orbital parking capacity (as in how many objects can we safely add).

Its not getting crowded.