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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

A small number of countries are responsible for the majority of plastic in the ocean. China is far and away the worst offender:

https://infographic.statista.com/normal/chartoftheday_12211_...

https://www.iswa.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Calendar_2011_03_...

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> China is far and away the worst offender

Those data are from 2011, and at the time China was importing huge quantities of plastic from the entire world. This was documented in Plastic China[1], a censored[2] short film which rumor has it was instrumental in getting China to cut down on their mixed plastic imports.[3] I'd be curious how the situation has changed since then.

It's an important distinction. The plastic is coming from Chinese rivers, but that doesn't mean it originated from Chinese consumers. It just means China wasn't rich enough to box it up and ship it across the border (like was done to them).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooRVhRt1p54

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/world/asia/chinas-environ...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1767769x8

The west benefits from a robust system for handling and landfilling waste. Our responsibility as far as the ocean is in modelling and exporting that culture to nations where the handling systems are not in place. I see this as similar to how the culture of smoking has been "exported" to places where there isn't nearly the same infrastructure present to limit access for kids, prevent second hand smoke exposure, and help people out who want to quit.

So yes, we may not be dumping our millions of daily plastic water bottles down the Mississippi like happens in the Ganges, but we could do a lot of good as a culture by intentionally modelling reusability and repair.

In that vein, I’ve noticed how little many seemingly progressive companies care about plastic waste. Lots of products that I would think are meant to cater to a progressive, “green” crowd use thick packaging apparently to give the product a premium feel. Hint brand water is one example, and a bag of Forager chips I had recently did this too. The thick plastic gives the product a premium feel but is utterly destructive to the earth. However the negative effects are rarely witnessed by either the producers or the consumers, and so they both benefit from the fictional belief that this behavior is okay.

I don’t mean to single out just these manufacturers, as all profit seeking organizations seem to behave in this way where the harms of their actions are quietly ignored. Consumers buy in to this equally, or make some off hand remark about the waste and keep on going. It’s a cultural issue for sure, and I agree that exporting this way of life to places even less equipped to handle it is yet another of those unseen harms we all happily allow ourselves to ignore.

My hope is to combat all these issues by fighting to change our culture at home to one that is radically waste free. We can use the privilege that got us in to this position to help get out of it. We can learn to be waste free. Unfortunately we’re hooked on the disposable culture bad, and I’m not sure if we’ll ever get ourselves off it. We could, but time will tell if we care enough and are creative enough to do it.

Products like chips should be forced to use biodegradable bags (whether wax paper, bioplastics, ...). Similarly, disposable drinking straws, cutlery, the little wrappers they come in, etc. should be biodegradable.

At most it might cost a few cents more per unit, but when millions of them get dumped in a river somewhere, they won’t stay there permanently.

Trying to eliminate packaging altogether is hopeless at this point, I’d wager.

Pepsico's SunChips use a biodegradable bag [1], so it is possible.

[1] https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/03/18/pepsis-biodegradabl...

Sure in the third world.

Doing that in the first world makes about as much sense as a tax on bowel movements because people in India don't use toilets and we need to pay for the increase in communicable diseases.

We noticed this recently with the Quip toothbrush. The whole concept is reasonable, and I get that they're limited to some degree by hygiene regulations, but it's just nuts that your brush tip "refill" shows up every three months in a think, nalgene-bottle-like enclosure. Which is apparently itself recyclable, but it feels like there's got to be a better way.

Quip's statement on the matter: https://help.getquip.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000320463-Is-q...

Where does the chain of responsibility end?

Do the domestic waste management companies that profited from collecting plastics, only to send waste to China bear any responsibility?

Using "sold" instead of "sent" would be more accurate. But I agree that turning a blind eye on what happens next is not ethical.

> >Where does the chain of responsibility end?

With capitalism.

>Do the domestic waste management companies that profited from collecting plastics, only to send waste to China bear any responsibility?

I would say they bear all of the responsibility, or at least the vast majority of it, due to the fact they profited from doing what they knew was irresponsible.

doesn't help that many countries send their recyclables to China as well... If people could handle their own waste instead of shipping it off to another country, might make people more conscientious of their consumerism.

Just learned this recently as well. I live in Korea where I learned they were shipping waste to China. Recently, I believe China shut this off and we've been made much more conscious about our waste in Korea within the past year.

I view this as a positive factor in the fight against plastic waste in the ocean. If we know where the major sources of the waste and concentrate efforts on removing 50% waste in those places, it could have a larger effect than removing 90% of waste from smaller sources such as developed nations that are already putting some effort into not polluting the environment.

Wow, Vietnam vs. US. Such a tiny country producing so much waste in the ocean.

Such a tiny country importing so much waste and dumping it in the ocean. There is every chance that your plastic waste ends up in the ocean via Vietnam.

EDIT: Other countries know that this is happening and should bear their share of the blame.

Oof. I completely forgot about that. I remember seeing a footage of a young boy in Singapore sorting dumped US plastic PC chassis by burning them with a lighter and smelling the fumes.

This is misleading. Plastic is shipped to those countries by other countries.

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