12 ms·

Ocean plastics: How much do rich countries contribute by shipping their waste?

142 points by animal_spirits 4y ago

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
I'd be interested in how much money Western corporations spent lobbying to prevent sensible waste policies that would have seen them foot the bill. We know they did it in their home countries. It is frankly inconceivable that they didn't do it to poorer nations. How many deposit return schemes and extended producer responsibility laws did they prevent while selling products in disposable containers? https://plastics.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/epr https://plastics.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/epr Washington Could Get European-Style Recycling. Lobbyists Are Mad About It https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/01/25/65471068/washington-could-get-european-style-recycling-lobbyists-are-mad-about-it https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/01/25/65471068/washing...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
orwin 4y ago
I really like posts like this, it challenged my biases and changed my opinion. Just wanted to state here that this wasn't a simple upvote.
- shmde 4y ago
  I saw a lot of east asia hate almost everywhere on the internet and surprisingly also on HN about asia dumping wastes into the ocean and polluting the globe in general when in fact we were the ones importing wastes and developing countries needed to use coal/oil for further advancing as a nation. The west/developed countries blames eastern/developing countries for it when in fact they were also responsible for a shitton amount of emissions when they started industrialising their countries and still continue to export wastes/export manufacturing stuff which generates waste.
  - llampx 4y ago
    As a consumer and a tourist, I was appalled at the amount of plastic being used everywhere (Thailand and Vietnam). Pineapple by the slice from a kiosk? Wrapped in plastic. Bubble tea? Plastic container and straw, along with a little plastic bag. Groceries? Plastic galore. I do know though, that on a per-capital level, the Western world still produces more waste, but there was no thought of hey maybe this much plastic is bad?
    - nerdponx 4y ago
      > Pineapple by the slice from a kiosk? Wrapped in plastic. Bubble tea? Plastic container and straw, along with a little plastic bag. Groceries? Plastic galore. Sounds like the USA too. Things have only started to change in the last 2 years or so, as some municipalities start banning plastic bags and foam food containers, and companies like Starbucks are starting to put on a show of biodegradability. Meanwhile now we have paper straws coated in PFAS. We definitely don't need the plastic bags, but I'd rather have the plastic straws!
      - Bayart 4y ago
        Free plastic grocery bags have been banned for years in the EU and it couldn't be better. It makes me all the more so annoyed at food packaging (since it's the only thing you see stuck in roadside bushes nowadays).
      - llampx 4y ago
        Yes that's what I mean, per capita the Western world leads in waste and plastic usage. Can't help but think that if Asia and Africa were at a similar income level, they would be as high or higher on the waste scale, i.e. the poorer populations in Asia pull down the average vs the city-dwelling middle classes.
      - ridgered4 4y ago
        I thought the bag banning was the wrong thing myself. I always reused my grocery bags as trash bags, now I have to buy trash bags...which seem like they use more plastic. But maybe most people don't use them that way.
batushka3 4y ago
> Most of the plastic that enters the oceans from land comes from rivers in Asia. More than 80% of it. This is THE PROBLEM. It is mesmerizing how article shifts blame to those terrible "rich countries". Me in that rich country collect every bit of plastic to trashbin, sort it out just to read than my asian friends dumped it to river zero F's given. And it's my fault!
- orwin 4y ago
  Did we read the same article? From what i've read, the west contribute to at most 5% of that (i used to believe it was much more, something like 20%, aka around the same per capita). I don't think the article blame the west at all, the opposite rather. It also says that the 5% figure is probably inflated, because traded plastics are likely to have more oversight and less likely to end in rivers. I think this article is perfectly balanced. Also: > Me in that rich country collect every bit of plastic to trashbin, sort it out just to read than my asian friends dumped it to river zero F's given. And it's my fault! It's your government that permit companies who exploit local populations with little to no oversight (regulations are bad, oversight is bad). That's basically what "neocolonialism" is. I dislike the word and i think this is more related to capitalism than colonialism anyway, but that's the accepted definition.
- yrgulation 4y ago
  Last time i raised the same concern i was accused of 1) colonialism 2) supremacism 3) racism. I suppose “poor” countries get a free pass because corrupt politicians accept to turn those countries into dumping grounds and we have no right to raise that issue. Even the suggestion that everyone should do their part is censored here on HN. Not by HN but by extremist nationalists from the region.
  - zakki 4y ago
    I think the problem is people from rich country blame the people from poorer country because they let the corrupt politicians turn their country to dumping grounds. But people from rich country doesn’t care that their politicians let their country exporting waste to poorer country.
Eupraxias 4y ago
The article concludes: "poorer countries are not a dumping ground for the rich." They are indeed a dumping ground for the rich. Whether they should they be so is another question.
- ovi256 4y ago
  Common misuse of positive statements for what should be normative statements.
  - stdbrouw 4y ago
    A dumping ground is a place where it is appropriate to dump waste. To say that poor countries are not a dumping ground for the rich means that it is not appropriate for the rich to dump waste there. The word itself is normative, and therefore so is the sentence.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mpweiher 4y ago
  What are your grounds for dismissing the well-supported conclusion of the article? Are their data faulty? Incomplete beyond what they themselves show?
  - Eupraxias 4y ago
    I'm not dismissing anything - I tend to agree with the findings of the article. I'm just taking issue with the words choice of that sentence.
    - tdehnel 4y ago
      Wild reasonable person appeared!
      - Eupraxias 4y ago
frankfrankfrank 4y ago
- maxerickson 4y ago
  Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me for 6 decades, I dunno, maybe I could have made an assumption about what you were going to do the next time.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  You can believe that it's the "poorer countries'" fault that they are releasing plastics into the ocean AND that it's also "richer countries'" fault for sending their trash to known bad actors.
- deworms 4y ago
- baxtr 4y ago
  I am not sure why you read this as "who's fault is this"? I read this as "let's make this transparent". From my perspective, who to blame and what to do is a second order question.
  - ifqwz 4y ago
    What's the point in making something transparent, if it isn't so it can be fixed?
    - NineStarPoint 4y ago
      Making something transparent can help identify if something should be fixed at all. Sometimes the transparency shows that the issue is arising from something that is worth the issues it is generating. So you make it transparent, and then you can look and determine what is or isn’t worth doing.
- okintheory 4y ago
  Suppose you're broke and then some rich guy walks up to you on the street and loudly proclaims "throwing plastic in this river next to us would be terrible! I would never do it! But, would you mind taking this plastic cup for me? I'll pay you $100 to take it! And I don't care what you do with it ;)". What would you do?
brightball 4y ago
Stuff like this is why I want to see more of the plasma incinerators that generate power by burning trash.
- galangalalgol 4y ago
  If a stellerator or tokamak type fusion generator ever broke even, could it also be used for waste disposal?
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    No. Chucking trash into it would immediately disrupt its operation.
  - spaetzleesser 4y ago
    No, it would stop working. But you could use the power it generates to burn the waste.
  - c_o_n_v_e_x 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_torch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_torch
- nerdponx 4y ago
  I remember reading about these several years ago. Why didn't they catch on? I think NY City was looking into them.
  - brightball 4y ago
    There’s a video documentary somewhere about a big one in NJ I believe. There’s a company in Canada that specializes in making them too.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Proven 4y ago
DoingIsLearning 4y ago
I hate how much this is made into 'rich' versus 'poor' countries. It distractes from the main culprits: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever, P&G, Mars, Kraft-Heinz ... etc. Coca-Cola sells 1.3 billion liters of coke in 'poor' Mexico alone, most of which will be in plastic packaging. Coca-cola alone is creating 110 billion PET bottles _per_year_. At the end of the day it is companies packaging products that have externalized the environmental costs of the _cheaper_ (for them) plastic packaging onto local governments and consumers. Why are we not discussing that? Why is there no regulation to force non-plastic packaging when a viable alternative packing exists? Why are these companies lobbying against plastic taxation? Why are these companies lobbying against single-use plastic bans? Sadly straws and q-tips ban is the most embarassing display of a collective of weak governments in the hands of corporate lobbying.
- gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
  There is a bit of a balancing act going on. If bottles moved to glass, that would increase weight and CO2. If they moved to more cans, that’s still plastic due to the liners.
  - joekrill 4y ago
    You might have a point with glass - but the can argument is a bit of a straw man. Even coated aluminum cans are significantly better than plastic bottles. They are very easily recycled.
  - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
    This is not about GHG emissions, this is about disposing of non-degradable plastic. But to follow your reasoning, do you have any data on the CO2 emissions of extracting, transporting and transforming crude oil into PET bottles, versus some 30% added weight to a delivery truck?
    - randunel 4y ago
      I'm not sure lorries would get 30% heavier, they're already trying to maximise every load. You would, instead, get x% more traffic.
Lio 4y ago
I’m sceptical about plastic recycling in general. We are slowly poisoning ourselves with micro plastics. The best way to keep it out of the water system is to stop using it. The second best way is to incinerate it and scrub the output gases. It’s even possible to route the CO2 to industrial greenhouses for things like tomatoes. Anything to keep plastic out of the water cycle.
dahfizz 4y ago
TLDR: > ... rich countries would contribute between 1.6% (in the best case) and 11% (in the worst case) of ocean plastics through shipping waste overseas. So, even in the most generous case, 89% of plastic waste comes domestically from Asia. The only solution is to get Asian countries to take waste seriously. As the article says, stopping all shipping of waste would have a negligible effect on the amount of plastic entering the ocean.
- ReptileMan 4y ago
  They are. 4 years ago in Jakarta malls cashiers put simple light items in double bags. Last year there were no plastic bags, only heavy reusable bags. But there is a lot of intertia.
- nashashmi 4y ago
  It's not that simple of a concept. It's not "their" problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bho6xY-jSuE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bho6xY-jSuE
princeb 4y ago
this is extremely interesting, the fact that at the end of the day, the plastics exporters still do a remarkable job of processing whatever plastic waste they keep, way better than the best job that plastic importers do with the plastic waste they pay for. So comparative advantage works once again, to our detriment. it seems we need to reverse the flow of plastics so that the countries good at reprocessing plastics reprocess more plastic around the world, even the ones produced by less developed countries. unfortunately a lot of waste processing industries in these countries are built on lies and corruption, so the economic cost and benefit is warped, leading to flow that is not optimal to humanity. poor countries are not being dumped on to the extent that they are paying to be dumped on. when the issue is legal and economic structures of individual countries, where do we even begin to fix the problem?
hedora 4y ago
Interestingly, 20% of ocean plastics come from boats: https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics Most of those are fishing nets. That seems easy enough to fix: Ban plastic fish nets! We're overfishing the ocean anyway, so lowering the efficiency of fishing seems fine. (In the same way fishing with dynamite is illegal in most places.)

I'd be interested in how much money Western corporations spent lobbying to prevent sensible waste policies that would have seen them foot the bill. We know they did it in their home countries. It is frankly inconceivable that they didn't do it to poorer nations. How many deposit return schemes and extended producer responsibility laws did they prevent while selling products in disposable containers? https://plastics.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/epr https://plastics.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/epr Washington Could Get European-Style Recycling. Lobbyists Are Mad About It https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/01/25/65471068/washington-could-get-european-style-recycling-lobbyists-are-mad-about-it https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/01/25/65471068/washing...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

orwin 4y ago

I really like posts like this, it challenged my biases and changed my opinion. Just wanted to state here that this wasn't a simple upvote.

shmde 4y ago
I saw a lot of east asia hate almost everywhere on the internet and surprisingly also on HN about asia dumping wastes into the ocean and polluting the globe in general when in fact we were the ones importing wastes and developing countries needed to use coal/oil for further advancing as a nation. The west/developed countries blames eastern/developing countries for it when in fact they were also responsible for a shitton amount of emissions when they started industrialising their countries and still continue to export wastes/export manufacturing stuff which generates waste.
- llampx 4y ago
  As a consumer and a tourist, I was appalled at the amount of plastic being used everywhere (Thailand and Vietnam). Pineapple by the slice from a kiosk? Wrapped in plastic. Bubble tea? Plastic container and straw, along with a little plastic bag. Groceries? Plastic galore. I do know though, that on a per-capital level, the Western world still produces more waste, but there was no thought of hey maybe this much plastic is bad?
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    > Pineapple by the slice from a kiosk? Wrapped in plastic. Bubble tea? Plastic container and straw, along with a little plastic bag. Groceries? Plastic galore. Sounds like the USA too. Things have only started to change in the last 2 years or so, as some municipalities start banning plastic bags and foam food containers, and companies like Starbucks are starting to put on a show of biodegradability. Meanwhile now we have paper straws coated in PFAS. We definitely don't need the plastic bags, but I'd rather have the plastic straws!
    - Bayart 4y ago
      Free plastic grocery bags have been banned for years in the EU and it couldn't be better. It makes me all the more so annoyed at food packaging (since it's the only thing you see stuck in roadside bushes nowadays).
    - llampx 4y ago
      Yes that's what I mean, per capita the Western world leads in waste and plastic usage. Can't help but think that if Asia and Africa were at a similar income level, they would be as high or higher on the waste scale, i.e. the poorer populations in Asia pull down the average vs the city-dwelling middle classes.
    - ridgered4 4y ago
      I thought the bag banning was the wrong thing myself. I always reused my grocery bags as trash bags, now I have to buy trash bags...which seem like they use more plastic. But maybe most people don't use them that way.

batushka3 4y ago

> Most of the plastic that enters the oceans from land comes from rivers in Asia. More than 80% of it. This is THE PROBLEM. It is mesmerizing how article shifts blame to those terrible "rich countries". Me in that rich country collect every bit of plastic to trashbin, sort it out just to read than my asian friends dumped it to river zero F's given. And it's my fault!

orwin 4y ago
Did we read the same article? From what i've read, the west contribute to at most 5% of that (i used to believe it was much more, something like 20%, aka around the same per capita). I don't think the article blame the west at all, the opposite rather. It also says that the 5% figure is probably inflated, because traded plastics are likely to have more oversight and less likely to end in rivers. I think this article is perfectly balanced. Also: > Me in that rich country collect every bit of plastic to trashbin, sort it out just to read than my asian friends dumped it to river zero F's given. And it's my fault! It's your government that permit companies who exploit local populations with little to no oversight (regulations are bad, oversight is bad). That's basically what "neocolonialism" is. I dislike the word and i think this is more related to capitalism than colonialism anyway, but that's the accepted definition.
yrgulation 4y ago
Last time i raised the same concern i was accused of 1) colonialism 2) supremacism 3) racism. I suppose “poor” countries get a free pass because corrupt politicians accept to turn those countries into dumping grounds and we have no right to raise that issue. Even the suggestion that everyone should do their part is censored here on HN. Not by HN but by extremist nationalists from the region.
- zakki 4y ago
  I think the problem is people from rich country blame the people from poorer country because they let the corrupt politicians turn their country to dumping grounds. But people from rich country doesn’t care that their politicians let their country exporting waste to poorer country.

Eupraxias 4y ago

The article concludes: "poorer countries are not a dumping ground for the rich." They are indeed a dumping ground for the rich. Whether they should they be so is another question.

ovi256 4y ago
Common misuse of positive statements for what should be normative statements.
- stdbrouw 4y ago
  A dumping ground is a place where it is appropriate to dump waste. To say that poor countries are not a dumping ground for the rich means that it is not appropriate for the rich to dump waste there. The word itself is normative, and therefore so is the sentence.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mpweiher 4y ago
What are your grounds for dismissing the well-supported conclusion of the article? Are their data faulty? Incomplete beyond what they themselves show?
- Eupraxias 4y ago
  I'm not dismissing anything - I tend to agree with the findings of the article. I'm just taking issue with the words choice of that sentence.
  - tdehnel 4y ago
    Wild reasonable person appeared!
    - Eupraxias 4y ago

frankfrankfrank 4y ago

maxerickson 4y ago
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me for 6 decades, I dunno, maybe I could have made an assumption about what you were going to do the next time.
tsimionescu 4y ago
You can believe that it's the "poorer countries'" fault that they are releasing plastics into the ocean AND that it's also "richer countries'" fault for sending their trash to known bad actors.
deworms 4y ago
baxtr 4y ago
I am not sure why you read this as "who's fault is this"? I read this as "let's make this transparent". From my perspective, who to blame and what to do is a second order question.
- ifqwz 4y ago
  What's the point in making something transparent, if it isn't so it can be fixed?
  - NineStarPoint 4y ago
    Making something transparent can help identify if something should be fixed at all. Sometimes the transparency shows that the issue is arising from something that is worth the issues it is generating. So you make it transparent, and then you can look and determine what is or isn’t worth doing.
okintheory 4y ago
Suppose you're broke and then some rich guy walks up to you on the street and loudly proclaims "throwing plastic in this river next to us would be terrible! I would never do it! But, would you mind taking this plastic cup for me? I'll pay you $100 to take it! And I don't care what you do with it ;)". What would you do?

brightball 4y ago

Stuff like this is why I want to see more of the plasma incinerators that generate power by burning trash.

galangalalgol 4y ago
If a stellerator or tokamak type fusion generator ever broke even, could it also be used for waste disposal?
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  No. Chucking trash into it would immediately disrupt its operation.
- spaetzleesser 4y ago
  No, it would stop working. But you could use the power it generates to burn the waste.
- c_o_n_v_e_x 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_torch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_torch
nerdponx 4y ago
I remember reading about these several years ago. Why didn't they catch on? I think NY City was looking into them.
- brightball 4y ago
  There’s a video documentary somewhere about a big one in NJ I believe. There’s a company in Canada that specializes in making them too.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Proven 4y ago

DoingIsLearning 4y ago

I hate how much this is made into 'rich' versus 'poor' countries. It distractes from the main culprits: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever, P&G, Mars, Kraft-Heinz ... etc. Coca-Cola sells 1.3 billion liters of coke in 'poor' Mexico alone, most of which will be in plastic packaging. Coca-cola alone is creating 110 billion PET bottles _per_year_. At the end of the day it is companies packaging products that have externalized the environmental costs of the _cheaper_ (for them) plastic packaging onto local governments and consumers. Why are we not discussing that? Why is there no regulation to force non-plastic packaging when a viable alternative packing exists? Why are these companies lobbying against plastic taxation? Why are these companies lobbying against single-use plastic bans? Sadly straws and q-tips ban is the most embarassing display of a collective of weak governments in the hands of corporate lobbying.

gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
There is a bit of a balancing act going on. If bottles moved to glass, that would increase weight and CO2. If they moved to more cans, that’s still plastic due to the liners.
- joekrill 4y ago
  You might have a point with glass - but the can argument is a bit of a straw man. Even coated aluminum cans are significantly better than plastic bottles. They are very easily recycled.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  This is not about GHG emissions, this is about disposing of non-degradable plastic. But to follow your reasoning, do you have any data on the CO2 emissions of extracting, transporting and transforming crude oil into PET bottles, versus some 30% added weight to a delivery truck?
  - randunel 4y ago
    I'm not sure lorries would get 30% heavier, they're already trying to maximise every load. You would, instead, get x% more traffic.

Lio 4y ago

I’m sceptical about plastic recycling in general. We are slowly poisoning ourselves with micro plastics. The best way to keep it out of the water system is to stop using it. The second best way is to incinerate it and scrub the output gases. It’s even possible to route the CO2 to industrial greenhouses for things like tomatoes. Anything to keep plastic out of the water cycle.

dahfizz 4y ago

TLDR: > ... rich countries would contribute between 1.6% (in the best case) and 11% (in the worst case) of ocean plastics through shipping waste overseas. So, even in the most generous case, 89% of plastic waste comes domestically from Asia. The only solution is to get Asian countries to take waste seriously. As the article says, stopping all shipping of waste would have a negligible effect on the amount of plastic entering the ocean.

ReptileMan 4y ago
They are. 4 years ago in Jakarta malls cashiers put simple light items in double bags. Last year there were no plastic bags, only heavy reusable bags. But there is a lot of intertia.
nashashmi 4y ago
It's not that simple of a concept. It's not "their" problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bho6xY-jSuE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bho6xY-jSuE

princeb 4y ago

this is extremely interesting, the fact that at the end of the day, the plastics exporters still do a remarkable job of processing whatever plastic waste they keep, way better than the best job that plastic importers do with the plastic waste they pay for. So comparative advantage works once again, to our detriment. it seems we need to reverse the flow of plastics so that the countries good at reprocessing plastics reprocess more plastic around the world, even the ones produced by less developed countries. unfortunately a lot of waste processing industries in these countries are built on lies and corruption, so the economic cost and benefit is warped, leading to flow that is not optimal to humanity. poor countries are not being dumped on to the extent that they are paying to be dumped on. when the issue is legal and economic structures of individual countries, where do we even begin to fix the problem?

hedora 4y ago

Interestingly, 20% of ocean plastics come from boats: https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics Most of those are fishing nets. That seems easy enough to fix: Ban plastic fish nets! We're overfishing the ocean anyway, so lowering the efficiency of fishing seems fine. (In the same way fishing with dynamite is illegal in most places.)