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The plastic that ends up in the ocean comes from places & countries that have no waste management at all besides dumping garbage directly in rivers and the ocea
by fvdessen 9y ago
The plastic that ends up in the ocean comes from places & countries that have no waste management at all besides dumping garbage directly in rivers and the ocean. I doubt that's the case for Taiwan.
- craftyguy 9y agoI was in Taiwan a couple years ago doing a beach cleanup, plastics (bags, etc) most definitely make it into the water there.
- wnissen 9y agoRight, but most of them are getting landfilled at the worst, right? As I understand it, the majority of the garbage is coming from countries that have no commercial-scale waste disposal except ocean dumping.
- craftyguy 9y agoMost != all, and it doesn't take much plastic to really mess up an ecosystem. Specifically in north Taiwan's case, I recall learning that a portion of the trash in the ocean comes from China via ocean currents, but there's still a significant amount coming from Taiwan via accidents (trash spilling, vessels losing it, etc)
- always_good 9y agoWell, if we're guessing, surely developed nations produce an order of magnitude more waste in general. Just like the average American consumers more energy than everyone else.
- fvdessen 9y agoWe don't have to guess, according to this source, 98% of marine litter comes from outside Europe & US [1]. [1] https://www.marinelitterthefacts.com/sources https://www.marinelitterthefacts.com/sources
- craftyguy 9y agoTaiwan is outside Europe and the US. So that statistic doesn't really help prove the point that most of the trash in the ocean around Taiwan is from other countries that dump straight into the ocean.
- HumanDrivenDev 9y agoDumping rubbish directly off the coast, on an industrial scale, often happens in Taiwan. You can see this by visiting practically any beach there. I was in Taidong in October, on the South East of the island which is supposed to be less polluted, and the beach was strewn with washed up plastic.