[icc97]

The article points out that 89% of sea plastic is the throwaway kind, e.g. cutlery and plastic bottles. It's relatively simple to cut down on these. Switch to using aluminium cans instead of plastic bottles, they're much more likely to be recycled. Then obviously put the can in the recycling. Better yet, use your own water bottle. If you want bottled water get it in crates of glass bottles. Shops will often take the crates back to be washed and reused.

[jackvalentine]

But isn’t most of the sea plastic also from the Yangtze and Ganges rivers?

I try and avoid single use plastic, it seems obscene to me it even exists, but my waste ends up in landfill. To solve ocean plastic we need bin men and landfill in the countries causing it.

The fight against single use plastic in the developed world is just, but a separate issue.

[pbhjpbhj]

You don't recycle plastics in your country?

A problem in the UK has been that plastics have been passed on for recycling only to be sent to China, for example, and dumped.

The issue as I see it is that we expect waste processing to be profitable and only do it if it is - waste processing should be handled from the profits of waste production.

So many companies conning their customers with half-empty packaging, products designed to break, etc., seems to be a large part of the problem.

[jackvalentine]

> You don't recycle plastics in your country?

I think it's become apparent that in pretty much every western country we were shipping them to China, as you described for the UK. That's now come to an end. Who DOES subsidise local industry enough to recycle in-country?