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> Most Americans’ daily routines depend on single-use items and throwaway plastic packaging, much of it flowing into streams and oceans, polluting our ecosystems.

This is unsubstantiated sensational bs. Plastics do end up in landfill or incinerator, but the US does not have waterway pollution problem.

[DanBC]

There are microplastics in every US waterway. https://owi.usgs.gov/vizlab/microplastics/

[cannedslime]

Sure there is, but there is a huge difference between dumping plastic waste into rivers like it happens in India, Africa etc and then being able to measure trace amounts of microplastics in the environment. Of course plastics left in nature will eventually find its way into the water streams.

[notfromhere]

I mean its still a problem. "We're not as bad as the third world" isn't really an argument

[DanBC]

You might want to read up on that thing about plastic coming from a few chines and indian rivers, because it's wrong.

[vanderZwan]

And do you have a source for that or is your assertion just as unsubstantiated?

[scottlocklin]

No, he's quite right:

https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution

Most American and European plastic waste finds its way into landfills.

"In the chart below we see the global distribution of mismanaged plastic waste aggregated by world region. The East Asia and Pacific region dominates global mismanaged plastic waste, accounting for 60 percent of the world total.

There is a wide gap between East Asia and the other regions — South Asia ranks second but contributes around 5 times less with 11 percent of the total. This is followed by Sub-Saharan Africa (9 percent); Middle East & North Africa (8.3 percent); Latin America (7.2 percent); Europe and Central Asia (3.6 percent) and North America (1 percent).

If we aim to address the ocean plastic problem, an understanding of this global picture is important. It highlights the fundamental role of waste management in preventing ocean pollution; whilst countries across North America and Europe generate significant quantities of plastic waste (particularly on a per capita basis), well-managed waste streams mean that very little of this is at risk of ocean pollution. "

[NeedMoreTea]

Where does your recycling go? To nations with the fewest environmental controls. Where does it mostly come from? From the West. So much it breaks down their ability to cope meaning local waste now doesn't get recycled much any more either.

Now that Asia has mainly stopped accepting recycling - much of which is too contaminated before it gets out of the bale or container to recycle so gets illegally dumped or burned - even more goes to Africa instead. Except all countries that have had some part in recycling and try and stop or restrict it find they have a major problem of illegal imports and illegal processing - which is easier to stop than the containers. See for instance the Philippines vs Canada recently.

so the West is exporting what seems to inevitably become an illegal industry to every country stupid enough to join in.

If we just banned export and dumped it all in landfill again the world would be better off.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

However, the West sends plastic to Asia.

If a country sends plastic waste to Asia and then it's mismanaged there, what country gets the blame for mismanagement in those statistics?

[vanderZwan]

Thank you for taking the time to dig for sources and elaborate (although you basically did someone else's "homework" here).

[scottlocklin]

It's unfortunately not typically discussed. If you really want to solve the problem, being even more careful about plastics in the West really isn't going to move the needle. Knowing this is important.

[hunter2_]

Ironically, the extra care such as banning plastic bags, straws, etc. in the West does lead to this very conversation becoming normal across lay people rather than just those who "really want to solve the problem," which probably does have significant value as well. Like a raising-awareness event.

[balfirevic]

Homework was The Guardian's to do in the first place.

[ebg13]

If you can ignore that stuff, though, the history of the rise of plastics is itself actually super fascinating.

[peterwwillis]

They say "much" ("a large amount") of it ends up in waterways, which is substantiated. As one tiny example, look at Mr. Trashwheel. It collects ten tons of trash on a rainy day. If you don't believe me, here is a sped-up video of it collecting plastic, styrofoam, and other single-use trash items[1].

And here are statistics on the trash gathered[2]. 649,236 plastic bags, 880,646 plastic bottles, and plenty of other miscellaneous plastic pieces. All of this disrupts natural ecosystems, and is ingested by animals who then get sick, and later gets into us as microplastics when we ingest the animals. This is the reason nearly all of our food and beverages contain microplastics.

If this doesn't seem that bad, the above example is from a single stream into a single harbor in a single city. Now imagine the national scale.

But plastic isn't the only pollutant of US waterways. Bacterial matter, nutrient excess, and industrial toxins regularly find their way through the watershed into main waterways, affecting marine life as well as humans. Waterway pollution is a big issue in the US.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=19&v=GgnTBxSMo3g [2] http://blogs.ubalt.edu/ubmag/the-problem-of-plastics/

[DoingIsLearning]

I mean they do accurately describe one of the major mechanisms for ocean plastic pollution but it is absolutely innacurate to say that the source of this plastic is from US waterways.

[pbhjpbhj]

So you're saying _USA_ waterways are not a sink for plastic pollution (and source of ocean plastics)? Or you just think a professor of USA history should point out parallel issues in other countries?

[ansible]

Plastic pollution is a general problem for everyone, including in the USA.

If we're talking specifically about plastic pollution in waterways, the USA is nowhere close to the top of the list for that particular problem.

In the USA, we have the means to recycle most plastics, but there needs to be political will to get it done. Merely relying on industries to make a profit off of plastic recycling is not nearly sufficient.

We need to enact more regulations to ensure that more products are make with recyclable materials, that the products themselves can easily be recycled, and provide incentives to actually do the recycling. We have a lot of work ahead of us, and in the current political climate, little political will to get it done. This is a big problem in the USA.

[DoingIsLearning]

90 percent of all the plastic that reaches the world's oceans gets flushed through just 10 rivers: The Yangtze, the Indus, Yellow River, Hai River, the Nile, the Ganges, Pearl River, Amur River, the Niger, and the Mekong (in that order). [1]

[1] Christian Schmidt, Tobias Krauth and Stephan Wagner (2017), Export of plastic debris by rivers into the Sea

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368

[pbhjpbhj]

Yes, yes, and if we point the finger harder at _other_ people then our own failure to provide a model for action will be fine.

Us: You need to clean up the Yangtze.

Them: Well what are you doing about your plastic waste

Us: We're shipping it to you!

[NeedMoreTea]

Ahh, the places receiving so much in US, and to a lesser extent other Western imports, their own putative systems for dealing with the waste and recycling it break down completely. Leading to entire towns built on processing the West's waste meaning it's everywhere.

"Their fault, nothing to do with us"

This is blaming the recipient of the bullet for the shooting.

[jessaustin]

Should we be more specific? Very few cities in my state have ever had recycling programs of any kind, so we can't be blamed for this harm that "coastal elites" have inflicted on China.

[NeedMoreTea]

Actually I tend to think less specific - it's a global problem of globalisation and global supply chains. That rather makes it everyone's problem - those that created it, bought it, disposed of it and possibly recycled some of it. Recycling aimed to make the problem better and ended up so broken that it's making it worse. Pointing the finger at someone else to escape in each and every piece on the matter isn't particularly helpful.

I've slowly ended up thinking that simply dumping it in landfill is less harmful, but not as good as producing less in the first place. Which is still a point in favour of your state's reluctance to recycle.

[mikojan]

That's great. What about the countries you're shipping your plastic waste to?

[fredsir]

> What about the countries you're shipping your plastic waste to

Or ordering from. Their pollution is funded by you.

[cannedslime]

No one ships plastic waste unless you mean E-waste... The OP was about the fact that no western country just throws household plastic waste into the water, it goes to landfills or is very often incinerated, plastic is a pretty good carbon source for combustion you know...

[mikojan]

> No one ships plastic waste unless ...

Yes. Unless we do. Which we are. And it ends up in the water. And we remain responsible for the foreseeable consequences of our actions.

[cannedslime]

Ok, we apparently still ship plastic waste to India and Malaysia. Though about 85% is incinerated, at least here in Denmark. Crazy really. Most plastics can't be easily recycled, it actually makes sense just to burn it really.

[jamil7]

The US and various European countries definately ship plastic waste to other countries for "recycling".

[pbhjpbhj]

Yup, people in UK carefully wash plastics, use separate bins, special collection trucks .. then the waste is shipped for sorting and recycling, only it's much more profitable to dump the plastics and take the extra money paid to "recycle" it. Richer nations have companies who know what's happening, but the people think "we're recycling, saving the planet", and the companies get more money, and the poor people make much more money than they would have. Everyone wins!

I assume this is still happening but there have been several exposés, leading some people to no longer bother recycling. As a reaction to that some city/area councils will fine you for not separating recyclables; our city vastly reduced the size of our bins (trash cans).

Most of our family waste seems to be unrecyclable plastic packaging.

[JoeAltmaier]

That washing part always gets me. Its consuming more resources, perhaps more than the bottle or can is worth. My mother in law used to put empty bottle and cans (trash!) into my dishwasher and run it with soap. My god, the waste, the damage to the environment.

It reminds me of eco-tourism. Its fun/satisfying to be part of 'recycling', so folks make up steps they can do to participate more, and end up torpedoing the whole point of it.

[NeedMoreTea]

Most of our plastic "recycling" is shipped. Thousands and thousands of container loads full of milk cartons, bottles etc compressed into bales.

The US exports by far the most. Much is poorly washed or sorted, regardless of which nation sent it, often so it's not suitable for recycling - plastic recycling is very easy to contaminate.

When countries push back and restrict imports they find they have an illegal industry that starts mislabelling containers, and illegal factories spring up.

Now it's "their fault".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46566795

[cannedslime]

So you are telling me someone offers recycle services and they just dumb it in 3rd world rivers? How is that not "their fault" ?

Australia ships toxic waste to Denmark, is that problematic in it self? No! Because a danish company offers services for safe disposal. If that company just dumbed the barrels of toxins in the ocean, would Australia be responsible?

[dillonmckay]

There was an article recently about Malaysia sending back inappropriate cargo containers, filled of plastic waste, back to the US.

[ansible]

We used to ship a lot of plastic waste back to China in what would be otherwise empty shipping containers. The movie "Plastic China" shows what the other end of that looks like:

https://www.amazon.com/Plastic-China-Jiu-liang-Wang/dp/B06XT...

TL;DW: The producers find the cutest little girl in all of China, living in abject poverty amid toxic squalor.

[cannedslime]

Yeah this really isn't much of a problem in modern western societies... Other places in the world that happens for sure, but not US or europe.