sandeep retweetou
yes, asian and african rivers produce 95% of ocean plastic but nobody asks where the plastic comes from.
plastic recycling is a scam. always has been.
the industry knew since 1974 it “cant be justified economically”
they funded the recycling campaigns anyway because the alternative was banning plastic.
only 5-6% of US plastic actually gets recycled and europe isnt better.
the EU exports 1.1 million tonnes of plastic waste per year, 3 million kg leaving every single day.
31% goes to turkey, 16% to malaysia, 13% to indonesia, all labeled “recyclable”
most plastics cant even be recycled to begin with (thousands of types, different chemical properties). and for the few that can, the output is lower quality and more toxic than virgin plastic.
you literally degrade the material each cycle until its worthless.
so what happens to the other 95%?
western countries ship it to southeast asia and africa under the label “recycling exports” with the receiving countries promising to recycle it in their stead for a price, but those countries dont have facilities either. so they burn it or dump it in rivers.
every 20 minutes, a 10-tonne truckload of plastic enters the ocean in indonesia alone.
it may look like indonesians pollute more but that’s because we ship them our garbage and they have no infrastructure to handle it.
china used to absorb it all. when they banned imports in 2018, the west just redirected to countries with weaker regulations. malaysia, vietnam, philippines. the map below shows the result.
you sort your trash so you feel like youre helping, the plastic goes on a boat, gets burned in a village without emissions controls, poisons their air and water, flows into their rivers, enters the ocean, and in your food and water.
you feel good about the plastic you recycled and never think about it again but you end up eating it anyway.
then we ban straws and plastic bags and call it environmentalism
Sandy Petersen 🪔@SandyofCthulhu
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