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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

Poorer parts of the world have (typically) much worse problems with litter.

Poorer nations typically have no/few refuse collection services, and people often just pile up and burn their own refuse or dump it in rivers to take it away.

That means poorer people see directly the litter rather than an 'out of sight, out of mind' approach.

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Poorer parts of the world also purchase a LOT more products packaged in single use packaging than industrialized countries. In the Philippines, pretty much every consumer product that could be sold in a multi-use jar, tube, or bottle instead comes in a single-use plastic sachet like you would get for ketchup in McDonald's. Laundry detergent, toothpaste, hair products, you name it. When you combine that with a lack of waste collection infrastructure, you end up with the Pasig river full of single-use plastic sachets every time it rains.

Here's a well researched report that dives into a lot of the issues of why these plastics are used. It is a combination of economic and societal factors.

https://www.no-burn.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Sachet-Ec...

And here's a article that names and shames which companies produce most of the single use plastic waste found in the Philippines.

https://www.rappler.com/environment/findings-philippines-pla...

https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2020/09/turning-tap-plastic-...

> Poorer nations typically have no/few refuse collection services, and people often just pile up and burn their own refuse or dump it in rivers to take it away.

Would it not make sense then if they had a container with which to collect and responsibly dispose of the refuse? A plastic bag perhaps?

They have to put the bag somewhere. Paying for a guy to come around and haul your garbage away every week to be responsibly disposed in a secure landfill is laughably out of budget for a huge chunk of the world population.

Or maybe we could tackle the root of the problem, avoid waste that doesn't decompose on the human timescale.

Places that still have open defecation and garbage in the streets have bigger issues to be solved before we deduce plastic bags are the problem. E.g. third world.

Seattle and SF have banned plastic bags and the streets are still littered with human feces. Maybe for their next initiative they should pass out reusable bags for people to poop into. Sorry but a feel good measure to make grocery bags illegal doesn't move the needle for me when I still have to play hopscotch with literal logs of human shit.

These priorities are hilariously out of order.

More importantly, the folks who take the time to response to these surveys in poorer countries are much more likely to be the affluent class who spends time in the kind of areas the surveyors are willing to visit, and has spare time on their hands to talk to people.

Yeah, was going to say similar.

A decade ago I had the opportunity to visit Nairobi, thanks to my partner at the time.

The place is highly varied, the best looking like any western city, while the worst is basically people living on top of a not-yet-sealed landfill site:

https://www.google.com/maps/@-1.2785067,36.7500781,3a,71.6y,...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kibera_Nairobi_Kenya_slum...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MathareValleySlum.jpg

Her brother is involved with a startup whose mission is to help with this, might be interesting to some folks here: https://www.sargasso-reclamation.com

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