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> Is this not misleading? No. > I thought that most countries offload their plastic waste to regions in Asia (paying them to take it), so of course Asia comes
by adventured 5y ago
> Is this not misleading?
No.
> I thought that most countries offload their plastic waste to regions in Asia (paying them to take it), so of course Asia comes off looking as the largest emitter.
Why would that be the case? Asia's consumers - billions of them - are now the world's largest in terms of unit consumption/use/disposal of plastic.
I don't think anybody could miss the fact that China's consumer economy is now by far the world's largest in unit terms. And it's set to get quite larger yet. China has more plastic consumers than the US + EU combined at this point.
Just Indonesia + the Philippines = 380 million consumers. They buy, use and dispose of enormous amounts of plastic. These nations are not living in the 18th century, they have full access to plastic consumer goods/packaging, whether manufactured domestically or from China.