[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.