"Most of the world’s largest emitting rivers are in Asia, with some also in East Africa and the Caribbean. In the chart we see the ten largest contributors. This is shown as each river’s share of the global total. You can explore the data on the top 50 rivers using the +Add river button on the chart.6
Seven of the top ten rivers are in the Philippines. Two are in India, and one in Malaysia. The Pasig River in the Philippines alone accounts for 6.4% of global river plastics. This paints a very different picture to earlier studies where it was Asia’s largest rivers – the Yangtze, Xi, and Huangpu rivers in China, and Ganges in India – that were dominant."
The massive concentration in the Philippines is one of the most interesting takeaways here. I ended up poking around for more details on this, and it looks like the causes relate to, among other things, a lack of proper waste disposal and an industry reliance on plastic sachets for food packaging.
I met a company once that sells parking lot-sized incinerators [1]. The only market they managed to get traction was the Philippines. I guess proper waste disposal is difficult when you are spread around many islands like that.
Interesting point regarding the incinerators! From what I've read, a lot of it has to do with systemic mismanagement of the situation from the various governments over the past few decades.
Wonder if this is connected to China ceasing to accept trash/recycling from the US.
I really hate that recycling became essentially a for-profit shell game of shipping it somewhere else to be a problem rather than dealing with building the domestic infrastructure needed to correctly handle it (including not overselling recycling so we could get waste-to-energy plants as part of the mix).
It could have some small connection, but I would probably guess (based of of general trends) that it has to do with some regions or cities not yet having adequate waste disposal systems.
I live at the end of the Pearl River Delta and regularly cross it by boat and travel along the shoreline. There is not a great deal of surface-visible physical plastic trash floating out of the river. Especially additionally considering the huge number of people living here (~100M+ within 100km radius), it is very well collected and managed versus rivers in the developing world. None of that mud-mixed-with-plastic-refuse buildup you often see in, say, India, Thailand, or undredged canal systems.
On the other hand, it reveals a lot about people. I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone complain about non-plastic straws...even my 83 year-old uncle who lived through WW2...can't stop moaning about the tiniest inconvenience in his life. Like, what did people drink out of in the 1950s? Meanwhile I've picked up hundreds, maybe thousands of the bastards off beaches the world over. I picked up more than one today down by the river.
Yeah, you're right. Straws aren't the main problem. Of the two bags of litter I picked up today, there were only one or two. You could ban everything but straws and there'd still be so much plastic in the ocean that if you were forced to look at it, you'd vomit.
You're right. We're not going to fix plastic ocean trash by banning straws. We're going to have to fix plastic ocean trash by banning all one-time use plastics. For a start. And then ban the rest. And I guarantee you you're going to hate that.
No, I get it. Everyone needs to do their part. But western countries pioneered plastic waste, and they need to lead the way on solving the problem. It's the same conversation as CO2 pollution. Clean up at home first and then help others get started down a better path. Otherwise it's a Mexican standoff with finger-pointing.
Coca-cola produces over 100 billion plastic bottles per year. Multinational corporations seem happy to keep cranking out items they know damn well will end up in the ocean. Because money.
Western countries didn't pioneer dumping plastic waste into the ocean. By the time plastics came about, western countries already had well established waste management that doesn't pollute the oceans.
Except that we did and still do. In the US, you can find plastic garbage in every waterway and along every highway, in large enough quantities that it's actually a real problem.
They should just all be PLA straws. They biodegrade, though somewhat slowly unless carefully composted, but even in the environment they’re just polymerized lactic acid and familiar enough to biology to likely be much much less impactful. (and specifically not filled with compounds that emulate hormones)
It is clear that to fix ocean plastic we don’t need to ban plastics, we don’t need to do feel good campaigns about environmentalism in america… we need to promote public service announcements about littering in a few target countries and subsidize the creation of sanitation industries around the world.
Making americans bring their own bags and drink through terrible straws makes a certain kind of person feel good because it feels like they’re doing something, a feeling which is somehow enhanced by the thing being somewhat unpleasant and unpopular. Feeling like you’re doing something and actually accomplishing something are entirely different.
The reason straws are so annoying is because the replacemt really truly absolutely sucks. I’d rather have nothing than the paper straws that start composting before you’re halfway through your drink.
Starbucks solved it that way and it’s amazing. Their cold drinks now come with a lid that has a big hole you can drink out of like it’s a normal cup. No straws, no annoyance, everyone’s happy.
The problem are those stupid lids with a hole in the middle that make it literally impossible to drink without a straw. But the non-plastic straws aren’t up for the job.
So you’re stuck with a super annoying situation that just sucks.
> We're going to have to fix plastic ocean trash by banning all one-time use plastics. For a start. And then ban the rest.
That would be it's own economic and ecological disaster. How many trees are you going to cut down and how much ore will you mine to make this happen? And given the considerable weight savings plastics bring, how much fuel will we burn to transport our substantially heavier goods in the dystopia you envision?
Oh, we're in a dystopia already. Spend a day picking up garbage off a beach. I'll take the balsa wood to-go boxes or whatever you're dreaming up there. It's a paradise compared to the hundreds of bags of garbage I've picked up over the years and the heartbreak I feel knowing how enormous and completely fucking irreversible the damage we've already done in the last 40 years is.
Pardon my bluntness, but if we had a better habit of not eating so many to-go meals and sat down and ate off a reusable plate with reusable utensils like all of humanity had to just 100 years ago, single-use plastic would have almost no reason to exist.
> I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone complain about non-plastic straws...even my 83 year-old uncle who lived through WW2...can't stop moaning about the tiniest inconvenience in his life.
Because it is obviously theatre to anyone with an ounce of intelligence and integrity. Another chance for unworldly Westerners to signal their grace without making real, substantial change.
From my own discussions and experiences, and anonymously agreed upon by some public health experts[0], the plastic bag ban (and other single use plastics) has served to create a significant health crisis among the homeless populations in the same cities that champion the ecological good. When you have a choice between taking a dump in the street (your living area) and taking a dump in a plastic bag (or using a plastic bag to pick it up some do for dogs), even a mind-addled addict would prefer the latter.
Plastic in the ocean is only ONE of many problems with plastic. Just because you don't throw your plastic in the ocean doesn't make plastic a good material. Fact is that it's made from petroleum resources, has a high carbon footprint, doesn't recycle well, and piles up in landfills.
That said, the straw ban is nonsense not because of this, but because they should ban goddamn plastic CUPS and plastic CONTAINERS first. I routinely get served a compostable straw with a petroleum-based plastic cup.
Seaconspiracy on Netflix was very interesting. It mentioned straw ban was backed by plastic industry because it had minimal impact on their business but it made people feel good.
How many straws do you have to not use to make up for the amount of plastic in a polyester man purse? Do you expect that number to be surpassed before the purse is discarded and replaced?
So because you now see that SF is a smaller slice of the global pie of pollution than you expected, then SF should not have attempted to address the local problem?
The ban is not negative; pretending it has lead to a meaningful reduction in plastic ocean waste is. I think the reason most people are negative to the ban is that a great deal of resources has been spent on something that tries to solve a minuscule problem (0.03% of plastic waste) while at the same time inconveniencing people with disabilities for example. These resources could have been allocated to for instance a small financial reward for turning in broken/abandoned fishing nets.
You're ignoring the costs of these bans. They are low hanging fruit, but they also have almost zero impact. At the same time, there is opportunity cost in political capital as well as resentment against environmental causes. It would be nice if that resentment at least came with some substantial improvement and not symbolic hollow victories.
Maybe we should just let it burn down if we're going to halt environmental progression on the basis that people will be too upset that they can't drink out of a small manufactures cylinder. Fuck me
All you've done here is defined something to be "wasteful" if it has no positive value already, so by definition banning it is not a negative. The problem is that you haven't managed to argue why straws fall into that category.
If people are using them, then almost by definition people are finding value from them, so you have to be more careful than that (not to mention the administrative cost of the ban, but let's ignore that here).
Straws are a small enough thing that it's easy to be mindlessly dismissive by saying "bring your own", but that does not actually advance your side of the argument at all. You can see how absurd that argument is when applying it to other things -- why not ban wasteful drink bottles and cans? Just bring your own cup or bottle from home. Or ban the wasteful automobile, just walk or ride or catch a bus if you want to go somewhere.
Or looking at it another way -- straws are such a minuscule part of the plastic pollution problem that banning them really doesn't matter right? If you can handwave away their small inconsequential value, then I can handwave away their small inconsequential impact.
I don't think you understand what you wrote. What specifically is your argument? That we shouldn't ban things because people use them and therefore find value? What does value even mean? You know there are countries with unpottablr water and you've decided to die on a hill about people finding value in plastic waste. Strange
My argument is specifically that you can't justify banning something simply because you personally define it as "wasteful" and assert it has no value in your opinion.
A large group of people have determined that it is wasteful and have therefore pushed to change it. I'm not a "lone thinker" in this regard. I can't imagine a world view in which you deem the disposal of straws, used entirely to suck liquids inside of probably an hour window, is not an easy problem to solve. I would also argue that such seemingly trivial changes are symptomatic of increasing reflection and movement towards the reduction of plastic, rather than as you paint it, some kind of virtue signalling exercise intended to piss off other people. At the end of the day, most people are not in control of global supply chains or have extenuating circumstances that inhibit their ability to contribute to the reduction of plastic waste beyond mitigating what they do and dont chuck out.
So we've established that you didn't understand what I wrote.
> A large group of people have determined that it is wasteful and have therefore pushed to change it. I'm not a "lone thinker" in this regard. I can't imagine a world view in which you deem the disposal of straws, used entirely to suck liquids inside of probably an hour window, is not an easy problem to solve. I would also argue that such seemingly trivial changes are symptomatic of increasing reflection and movement towards the reduction of plastic, rather than as you paint it, some kind of virtue signalling exercise intended to piss off other people. At the end of the day, most people are not in control of global supply chains or have extenuating circumstances that inhibit their ability to contribute to the reduction of plastic waste beyond mitigating what they do and dont chuck out.
Logical fallacies. None of what you wrote addresses what I wrote or the flaws in your assertion.
Okay let me make it real simple for you. Here is a definition of wasteful.
> (of a person, action, or process) using or expending something of value carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose.
So yes. It is extravagant to use a straw and then throw it out and it is wasteful especially when perfectly viable alternatives are available that do not produce plastic debris.
My problem with the straw ban is the ban itself. Why not give people a choice, incentivize different behavior? Just put paper straws next to plastic ones, with a feel-good message, and voila.
There is a limit of things you can ban before people will get tired of banning, and then you won't be able to ban things that might fully deserve it.
BTW, the world is running out of clean water, so how about we ban dishes in the restaurants to avoid wastefully washing them? Just bring your own, right?
Wow, growing up in India I always knew that the Mithi Nadi (ulhas) was incredibly polluted and trash filled. But, to see it at rank 3 is really eye opening.
There have been efforts over the last few decades to clean it up. But, Mumbai slums are situated on the river, and dump everything and anything into it. It would be nice to know if the Ulhas is mostly polluted with plastic upstream or at the mouth near Mumbai.
As the article discusses, the main contributing factor is a lack of effective waste disposal systems, almost entirely in low and middle income countries. The US, for example contributes .25% of global ocean plastic emissions (not the 4.5% from all of NA, most of which is from Central America and the Caribbean). High income countries can help low income countries develop these systems through grants and subsidies.
"blame transfer" ? How about "put your trash in a trash system, not the river" instead of guilting out the readers here? In other news, local government takes money meant for trash disposal and uses it for other things.
> There are also bad cultures that find it acceptable to just throw any trash into a river.
For thousands of years, Philippines culture was responsible for zero plastic waste being dumped into river and ocean systems. Food was grown organically, packaged and transported sustainably, and waste was managed to preserve ocean and river ecosystems.
What changed?
> The United States exercised formal colonial rule over the Philippines, its largest overseas colony, between 1899 and 1946. American economic and strategic interests in Asia and the Pacific were increasing in the late 1890s in the wake of an industrial depression and in the face of global, interimperial competition.
> For thousands of years, Philippines culture was responsible for zero plastic waste being dumped into river and ocean systems. [...]
> What changed?
The development of mass produced plastics in the 1940s-1950s; no one was throwing any significant quantity of plastic waste anywhere before then, so “thousands of years” of history are irrelevant.
> The United States exercised formal colonial rule over the Philippines, its largest overseas colony, between 1899 and 1946.
So...that ended just as mass produced plastics were becoming available anywhere, and wouldn't be directly relevant. If you want to argue that it produced cultural changes that directly affected how they local people reacted to mass plastic availability, you should make a specific argument, with evidence, about the changes it supposedly induced.
> If you want to argue that it produced cultural changes that directly affected how they local people reacted to mass plastic availability
You're making that argument yourself in your own words.
> you should make a specific argument, with evidence, about the changes it supposedly induced.
I wouldn't argue that way. I would instead note two salient points.
1. Traditional Philippine food waste management involved disposing of food waste and packaging in rivers. That was environmentally sustainable when all food packaging was biodegradable e.g. banana leaves and coconut shells.
2. Whilst foreign companies introduced plastic packaging to the Philippines, nobody introduced a way to process plastic waste effectively, which is why we have this problem.
What does something that ended 75 years ago have to do with the culture today of dumping trash in rivers? I knew someone was going to find a way to blame the US.
> I knew someone was going to find a way to blame the US.
US corporations deserve great credit for inventing plastics which have enabled foods and beverages to be transported conveniently all over the world.
Fortunately for US corporations, this credit has already been realised through the enormous revenues that have accrued to the patent holders and trading companies which have been richly rewarded for the invention and production of plastics.
for several decades, the United States had a culture of "just throw it on the ground". it took concerted efforts to curb what we were doing to what we have now. it was a whole cultural shift. we're not quite there, but we've managed to make a huge change.
so, "bad cultures" are just misguided, and can change.
It's just so easy: first world countries just have that "awesome" recycling systems. Their plastic just ends on ships full of plastic waste. China refuses to accept it, so we sell it it to other countries in Asia, which seemingly can't handle it anymore and just dumps it into the ocean. End.
That isn't the case based on the data. Fishing nets aside (which are definitely from predominately Chinese-owned fleets), much of this is actually not from the recycling systems, but is instead single use plastics, especially since China stopped accepting recycling from overseas.
Which is why all these cleanup projects and bag bans are just silly unserious people. Anyone who actually cared should be pushing for improved waste management in the source countries. If it’s aid grants for better trash service or threats of tariffs for not improving things or whatever, but banning straws or picking up plastic in the ocean strikes as nothing but narcissistic public preening.
That's a pretty disparaging and uncompromising view.
Banning single-plastic use in removes millions of tons of plastic from the ending up in the sea.
That is a net benefit for very little effort and inconvenience. It's not going to solve all problems and it's a low hanging fruit, but it's a start toward removing our dependence on single-use plastics.
Whatever level of plastic management we reach, there are already millions of tons of plastic in the sea to clean up. So efforts on that front are not in vain either. Again, they aren't going to fix the whole issue but they attempt to fix one part of it.
We don't have to tackle issues one at a time. People make efforts where they can. Even if it's only solving a few percent of the global issue. It's not posturing if it helps. No-one said each of these is the end-all of all solutions to the plastic waste problem.
These efforts don't distract from tackling the problem of waste disposal. Helping building waste infrastructures in countries like the Phillipines is first and foremost a political and policy problem, there needs to be a political will and a legislation framework to make it happen, then it's a money problem.
It's really not necessary to insult people who are trying to make a difference. You could spend your time turning up your nose at the huge corporations producing the plastic products that they are jamming in to these markets, or you could turn up your nose at corrupt third world countries for having broken waste management strategies, or you could turn up your nose at people who throw their garbage in rivers...and you decide that the people you want to deride are...the people picking up garbage and pointing out the problem?
In truth, I've never met a narcissist picking up garbage. Never.
Really I should just spend my money elsewhere than the Philippine food packaging companies? Or maybe I should vote in Malaysia to improve waste management? Petition my local Indian council to install waste collectors in my local river?
> In truth, I've never met a narcissist picking up garbage.
I didn't call them narcissist. I called the people who got on Twitter to let the world they know they support plastic straw bans because they care about the ocean, narcissists. And why do people feel the need to make up straw men to respond to? You can't find enough holes in what I said, so you make up something I didn't say? Why?
..or sifting it from the river before it enters the ocean. Is it the incentive for recycling is big enough for plastic to be recycled immediately after use, or no recycling centres. I remember recycling bottles and cans as a child for 5c each. This sounds like something that could be solved by somebody with enough capital investing in a recycling system / plants there. Bill / Elon / Jeff? Seems an extremely important issue we get solved, here on earth...
There is no such thing as plastic recycling as there is no use for second hand plastics. The best thing you can do is put it in a landfill. The Romans had landfills, there's no excuse for countries in the modern day that just toss trash in the river.
> To tackle plastic pollution we need to know where it’s coming from
So, where is it coming from?
TFA examined the last step - from river to ocean. But what is the source of all this plastic? Is it soda bottles, single use plastic bags, shrink wrap, structural plastic?
> It is estimated that 81% of ocean plastics come from Asian rivers. The Philippines alone contribute around one-third of the global total.
That's a start. We are becoming more informed.
What percentage of the ocean plastics are manufactured in Asia?
What percentage of the ocean plastics are manufactured in USA?
What percentage of the ocean plastics are manufactured in Europe?
What percentage of the ocean plastics are manufactured by the top 5 global food corporations?
The value of these questions is not to shift blame. It is to understand the system so we can target fixes.
The most informative question wasn't even raised in TFA.
I would argue that these are the wrong questions. As this article, and those papers referenced by the article point out, this has to do overwhelmingly with inadequate waste disposal systems. More interesting questions for solving the issue might be:
What types of items end up in the oceans?
Are they dumped legally or illegally?
What are the reasons that certain countries don't have the infrastructure in place to dispose of waste?
How can wealthier countries do their part in supporting countries who need to develop better waste management infrastructure?
I think that it is better to ask questions that lead us directly towards solutions that are actionable. The data strongly suggests that ineffective or nonexistent waste management is the root cause, so I think we should direct our questions towards solving that issue.
> I think that it is better to ask questions that lead us directly towards solutions that are actionable.
That will require money.
Who profits from producing the plastic in the first place?
The reason that question addresses your point is that a viable systemic fix would involve repurposing a percentage of the revenue towards waste management.
I think this is a hard question. Lots of people want to say that America is because it is consuming a lot of plastic and then shipping it to Asian countries for recycling. But they pay for that shipping and service. I do think there's a problem if you sell the service of recycling and then just dump it in the ocean/rivers. It's clearly a "both" players are at fault, but there's a key difference. One player is offering a service and the other player isn't checking if that service is being done in the way it is being claimed to be done. I don't think these two things are equal when we consider "fault." This comes down to a question of incentives and where those align. This is also why typically in law we come down harder on the person offering a service in bad faith.
So no matter why Philippines is contributing one-third of the global total, we should be talking about and criticizing them. That doesn't mean we shouldn't also be criticizing others (we should) nor that we shouldn't raise awareness of bad business practices. But we shouldn't shift the blame. We distribute the blame.
I'm not sure it's a question of anyone profiting from waste, it's more that dealing with waste correctly is a cost. Developed countries have comprehensive legislation around waste management that obliges municipalities to deal with it correctly (e.g. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:31...)
> But what is the source of all this plastic? Is it soda bottles, single use plastic bags, shrink wrap, structural plastic?
Stuff that washes out of rivers is almost all single-use containers like soda/water bottles, bottle caps, food containers, chip bags, consumer items from shampoo to mouthwash to toothpaste, toothbrushes, flip flops, combs, lighters, straws, toys, balls, cleaning products, oil cans, drums, tobacco tins, tupperware, disposable utensils, paddles, gas cans, pill bottles, syringes, milk crates.
Basically, if it's made out of plastic--doesn't matter the use, the lifetime--it ends up in the river and then the ocean.
Commercial fishing produces tons of discarded nets. I've seen an estimate that over half of ocean garbage is nets. I don't have a habit of trawling the deep ocean, so I can't confirm that. But I pick up beaches a lot and from volume, it's almost all consumer food items. Soda bottles in particular. It gives you a picture of what most people eat and drink. We're a bunch of sick monkeys from what I gather.
> Basically, if it's made out of plastic--doesn't matter the use, the lifetime--it ends up in the river and then the ocean.
I'll also say that what you find washing up on shore or down river is filtered out by a number of factors. Not all plastics are buoyant (i.e. less dense than water). Most plastic materials are actually really close to neutral, and some are slightly denser than water. That means that containers that get punctured and eventually fill up will simply sink. If those materials end up in surf breaks they will get obliterated and turned into a microplastic dust that will can still be suspended in the liquid. So you won't find them washing up (as much). The lighter plastics that are buoyant will tend to washed up onto shore just by wind and wave action. So the ocean sorts and filters things by their size and density. What you see on shore isn't what's out there in the deep ocean.
Case in point: plastic bottles are usually PET, which is denser than water. They will actually sink if they are punctured or without cap. The ones you find usually have a cap on. But the caps are polypropelene and they are generally less dense than water, so they float. That's why you'll always find a zillion more bottle caps and almost never find a plastic bottle without a cap on it, at least from wash up.
Makes you realize where all those damn missing bottles are. The ocean floor is fucked.
From experiences traveling I would also guess the packaging to content ratio is a lot worse in low income countries. Southeast Asia is littered with small shops selling snacks, and they mostly come in very small packages to be affordable (for a typical example see [1]). In Indonesia "gelas" (glass) is a popular packaging for drinking water, a yogurt cup like clear plastic packaging that contains just 220 ml water. It's empty after a few minutes, and the beaches and rivers are full of empty cups.
Manufactured is probably less important than where it is consumed and disposed of.
We know the Philippines take in recycling from the rest of the world as they had a diplomatic spat with Canada over being send household waste rather than recyclables.
The data point that the Yangtze, Xi, and Huangpu rivers are no longer the biggest sources can be simply attributed to China banning the import of recyclable plastic; it now likely goes to the Philippines and Malaysia instead.
Possibly you’re correct about bikes, but I suspect buses and cars have similar tire wear per passenger mile, with only a slight advantage for buses. Also, rubber biodegrades. Brake dust and rail dust are also concerns.
Is this not misleading? I thought that most countries offload their plastic waste to regions in Asia (paying them to take it), so of course Asia comes off looking as the largest emitter.
You're assuming that the plastic that gets sold is the same plastic that ends up in the rivers. Do we know that's the case? And if so, how does it go from being "in the system" to being discarded into the environment? Why would they pay money for it, just to throw it in a river?
Asian importers pay for containers of clean, recyclable waste from the UK. When it arrives they find they've got a container full of general household waste, which is of no use for anything.
I don't know how common this is but there have been several UK companies prosecuted for it. I've also seen stories where British reporters have gone to Asia and documented piles of obviously British waste in local dumps. These stories crop up in the British media quite frequently.
I wasn't trying to make an assumption - the report just didn't read how I expected.
And I'm not absolving them of responsibility, but the richest countries pay to offload plastic on them knowing pretty well there is no way to get rid of it besides tossing it. Those Asian regions that burn it have awful air quality issues.
Should these regions refuse money for our plastic? Probably - but this paints an incomplete picture.
Not really. Most of this waste seems to be single-use, and if you read through the cited references, the primary factor seems to be the inability to manage waste plastics from locally consumed products. Rivers are tempting targets for waste disposal if you lack a good waste management service locally.
> I thought that most countries offload their plastic waste to regions in Asia (paying them to take it), so of course Asia comes off looking as the largest emitter.
Why would that be the case? Asia's consumers - billions of them - are now the world's largest in terms of unit consumption/use/disposal of plastic.
I don't think anybody could miss the fact that China's consumer economy is now by far the world's largest in unit terms. And it's set to get quite larger yet. China has more plastic consumers than the US + EU combined at this point.
Just Indonesia + the Philippines = 380 million consumers. They buy, use and dispose of enormous amounts of plastic. These nations are not living in the 18th century, they have full access to plastic consumer goods/packaging, whether manufactured domestically or from China.
They estimate that a 1000 rivers contribute 80% of the _riverine_ plastic pollution.
But how much of the total in the oceans is riverine versus 'oceanic'? What is the total contribution of maritime activity (freight, fishing, cruises, recreational, military) to a non-riverine/oceanic plastic?
From what I've seen, the only oceanic activities that add much is fishing, which seems to be currently estimated to produce around 20% of global oceanic plastic waste. I believe the link may have mentioned this. If not, some of the references at the bottom will.
I looked through the interactive data and the paper this references as a source, it always refers to contributions as a percentage of total 'riverine' plastic. But never quantifies how much it is in relation to the remaining non-riverine contributions?
IF you want the raw numbers, check out the references at the bottom, particularly the "top" reference, published in 2021, which is where the raw data is.
Alas much plastic gets bundled up as `recycling` and brought up cheap and hands washed and pats on the back. Sadly that then goes onto some landfill in Africa or Asia and tada...blame shifted and politicians gets to say how well they are tackling things by being seen to be doing things.
If we want to create a chart by country that is actually fair we need to normalize for GDP per capita and population. This is a very crude way to single out countries based on incomplete data.
I'd like to see the list of worst offender countries that can do something about preventing plastic pollution, but aren't doing as much.
How is it helpful to know that India is one of the highest polluting countries when half a billion people live in abject poverty?
I think that per-capita normalization in particular is interesting. I have a spreadsheet where I did that, and the Philippines stands out even more then, as does Brazil. GDP is a bad normalization factor here, as the trend is weird. High income countries have very low emissions in general. Low income countries sometimes have high per capita emissions, but not usually. Middle income countries are the most likely to be high emitters, as they are most likely to be consuming large amounts of plastic without having developed the infrastructure to process the waste.
When it comes to emissions, poor countries are generally way lower than wealthy countries per capita. If we readjusted these charts to be plastic pollution per dollar, the Philippines would be several orders of magnitude higher than anywhere in the west.
I recently visited some manufacturers of high velocity polymer production lines. Their major markets were all Southeast Asia. That equipment should be outlawed. Regulation has to take the lead.
And to think that the EU made it mandatory for plastic bags to cost money, gravely inconveniencing every shopper... And my country only amounts to 0.02% of plastic waste in the ocean.
Still, it’s hard to imagine how one might ever consider such a small inconvenience “gravely inconveniencing” even in that very specific context. It’s such a small thing. I don’t think one has to have worked in the salt mines to think this.
Actually yes, since some shops now only have paper bags which are expensive and break just by looking at them. If you forget to bring a bag from home you're in trouble, especially if your groceries are heavy and you're far from home - the bags are guaranteed to break. (This is Europe, so you're walking back, obviously)
> If you forget to bring a bag from home you're in trouble
If you forget your keys you're in bigger trouble, so I still don't see your point.
Have we really come to the point where people carry a little supercomputer in their pockets at all time, but are unable to bring a bag when going shopping?
How is this not obvious? Things you do all the time aren’t forgotten. Things you do rarely are.
That said, “grave inconvenience” is really something. Not having plastic bags is absolutely ruining my life. Kids are crying. Wife is mad at me. Boss thinks I’m slacking. Dentist says I don’t floss. If we could have plastic bags back my life would be so much better.
I keep a crate in the trunk of my car. After paying my groceries, I put them back in the shopping cart. I drive that to my car, put the groceries in the crate, and return the shopping cart.
No bags needed, and unloading at home is easier too.
Yeah, whoever thinks that adding 40 cents to your bill for forgetting your shopping bag is a "grave inconvenience" was raised a spoiled brat. Plain and simple. The bar for something to be a "grave inconvenience" isn't high if you've never known of real hardship, I guess.
Yeah, SUP bans don't do anything for the ocean. Investment in waste management solutions in low and middle income countries is far better for the environment, but most politicians are not terribly well informed.
The EU introduced that tax in 2002, the research in TFA is from 2021. Perhaps your country only amounts to 0.02%, at least in part, _because of_ the EU's plastic bag tax?
Yeah, let's just all sit back and carry on business as usual while pointing fingers at whoever is the worst offender at the moment. That sounds like a good idea.
If you ever need more evidence the Environmental Industrial Complex is evil. You can already see the pre-planed patterns being used to make sure blame is placed back on you in the comments. Along with the pre existing day in day out controls of banning plastic things in your lives, the consistent control of you is important.
I really liked Reddit's trash bag meme in the end. It actually seemed to get a wider reach than I would have expected. Developing countries do also have status, it might be Versace but it also can be clean waterways, you just need to tie it back to locals who in turn can push governance.
Your comment mistakenly conflates North America with the United States. The US is only 0.25%. North America includes Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Of those, Guatemala appears to be the “leader” at 0.73%, approx 3 times more waste than the US despite having about 1/20 the population.
NA could make a heavy duty zero maintenance plastic disposal box. Powered by solar panels, ideally. Then give them for free to countries that don't have recycling facilities.
One thing to be aware of though is all these numbers are in the 0.x% range per country, making it easy to draw "eh we're not so bad" type of conclusions.
But consider visualizing it like this: if the entire amount of ocean pollution was represented by a 10x10x10 pile of tires, 2.5 tires would be of American origin. So while not completely embarrassing, it's not exactly great either.
Considering there are some 200 countries in world, 0.x% contribution is within the same order of magnitude to the average contribution.
So although some countries have more slack to pick up, I think the alarmist tone about US isn't necessarily unwarranted.
So, there is some interesting data on this in the data. Most of the North American waste comes from central America and the Carribean. The US and Canada combined are responsible for .27% of global plastic emission. Guatamala emits .73%, Panama emits .53%, Haiti .71%, and the Dominican Republic .64%.
Banning plastic bags won't do anything here. This is about countries not having sufficient waste disposal systems. If you want to have an impact on this, don't push for bans on plastic bags and other single use plastics. Donate to NGOs that help build new waste management systems in affected countries and push for federal grants to such organizations (if in the US).
As a side note, SUP bans actually have a number of unintended negative consequences, and it is not clear that they are even a net positive for the environment. Depending on who you ask, the environmental impact of such bans ranges from significant to marginal, and CO2 emissions from plastic bags is likely far better than alternatives.
I know the context is ocean pollution and my response is very anecdotal, and local watershed. Since the County & State put additional costs on plastic bags, the amount of them strewn all over the local parks, and the key creek in our area has dropped dramatically.
I still do see plastic bottles mainly from water, and aluminum cans both for soda and beer, but not much else.
These actions do reduce litter, but most ocean emission is the result of a complete lack of waste disposal systems. The quantities involved are always far larger in situations where a very large portion of waste is simply dumped into a river.
At first I thought the same, but their North American dataset includes countries in Central America and the Caribbean. The US does a relatively good job within its borders, but could do more to support waste management efforts in less wealthy countries.
It is far from obvious whether the best strategy is for the U.S. to clean up its 4.5% contribution, or to use those same resources to help the Philippines clean up their vastly larger share.
We do not have a 4.5% contribution, most of the NA contribution (as shown in the linked data) comes from Central America and the Caribbean. We contribute .25%.
The best strategy imho would be to split resources and do both. Helping far-off countries without cleaning up your own backyard would seem condescending and like an attempt to shift all blame elsewhere. Starting an effort to clean up ocean pollution originating from the US while simultaneously helping Asian countries do the same appears much more genuine and has a much better chance to work based on perception alone.
That's actually a really good point. While I do think that a larger share of effort and goodwill should be spent on major pollution first (and helping with cleanup and implementation of proper waste management there), not doing anything in your own backyard at the same time seems hypocritical.
Edit: I'm being glib, but seriously, this isn't necessarily a resource-intensive issue for the US to engage in. This kind of thing should be achievable purely through diplomacy. Surely there are some attractive incentives a nation like the US can bring to the table in the interests of compelling a nation like the Philippines to clean up its act, you know, like bringing a Nike executive to the meeting.
While I think I agree with the straws and plastic bags (it's hard without actual data), I do wonder whether reducing plastic packaging on a large scale would not have a significant effect as well.
Close to a decade ago I moved from Europe to the US. I did, and continue to do, perceive how much more plastics my groceries are packaged with. This is especially egregious for things that you buy in bundles, where each individual item is wrapped in plastics again. Also, cheese for example seems to be packaged with plastics a lot more than, say, paper.
In order to solve the problem, it's probably more important and effective to address the larger sources first, though. Prioritization.
I had read somewhere that a lot of waste(supposedly recyclable) from the US ends up in these poorer asian countries. These countries that actually don't have a lot invested in high efficient recycling systems.
But this article just shows the data where the water gets polluted from mismanaged waste. But not where this plastic comes from? I suppose it's not the full story then?
I've been reading up on this stuff for a while. Most of the waste is actually single use plastics from products consumed in the emitting countries, that are disposed of improperly. For example, the Philippines has an issue with sachets.
Just look at the article. This article states that a large percentage of the waste comes from nets lines and ropes. That is absurd on the face of it. This isn't a fact-based exercise.
The article’s title is “Where does the plastic in our oceans come from?”, and HN lists it as “Ocean Plastic Emissions by Country”. Indeed, one section is titled “Which countries emit the most plastic to the ocean?”.
Don’t let any of that fool you. We never actually get a breakdown of contribution by country in the extensive article. I’m not sure why.
Seven of the top ten rivers are in the Philippines. Two are in India, and one in Malaysia. The Pasig River in the Philippines alone accounts for 6.4% of global river plastics. This paints a very different picture to earlier studies where it was Asia’s largest rivers – the Yangtze, Xi, and Huangpu rivers in China, and Ganges in India – that were dominant."