Trash from just 10 rivers is responsible for 90 percent of ocean plastic pollution: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas...
Those 10 rivers are all in the developing world and China: the Hai, Nile, Meghna, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Pearl, Amur, Niger, Mekong, Indus, Yellow, and Yangtze. In terms of countries that's: China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, Egypt, Nigeria.
So the plastic you throw in the recycling bin in the US might very well end up in one of those 10 polluted rivers and in the ocean.
Is this still being misquoted? If you read the article you will see that it say 90% of plastic pollution from rivers are from those 10 rivers, not 90% of plastic pollution. A large part of the plastic pollution is not coming through rivers. It is also not much of a surprise that the rivers with most pollution is large rivers going through areas where many peoples live. Have anyone calculated how much is is per person living next to the rivers?
I'm not saying that it isn't important to clean up those rivers, but that it still is important what each of us do