We make more waste but we don't put it in rivers.
But not for them to "dump it for us". We don't want the river dumping. If we stop sending it or even stop trying to recycle entirely then it goes into a landfill. Going into rivers is an extremely avoidable fate.
0: https://www.ban.org/plastic-waste-project-hub/trade-data/ger...
When we outsource manufacturing, the carbon and a lot of the pollution is our fault, as an inevitable part of it. When we outsource plastic handling, tossing it in the river is not the same. It's really easy to not toss it in the river. We're turning a blind eye to it, but it's not because we actually want it. We want them to stop and they could stop.
A country like China might be able to play the game well enough to get enough power to say Enough is enough but many other nations in South Asia and Africa are still struggling due to the fall-out of...our colonial interference, pressures from the WTO to do things by our rules, wealth inequality that further pushes them into difficult situations... And we blame them.
All this while countries like the US set great examples for others and turn away from the Paris Climate Accords and release doctored research on climate change.
Let's stop messing about. We send it to them to get rid of it knowing what will happen. WE need to do better, we can't just point our fingers for ever. "We want them to stop and they could stop " so why is this the situation today?
The problem is not based on who generates the most plastic. Or in other words, our portion of the blame is not because we generate lots of plastic rather than minimal plastic.
The rivers in less privileged states would be dirty in any case, yes, for the reasons I've listed above.
I didn't use the word "blame" except to say that we shouldn't be blaming others for issues we created (the wealth disparaties, the petro-chemical industry, global consumer culture etc). Blame is neither here nor there, it's a matter of responsibility.
The combination of "Developed countries generate an order of magnitude more waste per capita. It seems unfair to blame poorer countries." and "We send it to other countries, have them dump it for us" sounds like it to me. Plus the sibling comment of "We instead ship it to poorer countries for them to put it in their rivers."
And yes I know you only made one of those. So with you not intending that meaning, then I guess you can ignore my comments, they weren't at you.
But I still want to counter the other users' implications and statements. The blame and responsibility we have in uncontained plastic is generally unrelated to the quantity we produce.
> Blame is neither here nor there, it's a matter of responsibility.
In this conversation they're the same to me, you can pretend I said the word responsibility instead.