The issue is that 90% of the plastic in the ocean is dumped from 10 rivers in Asia and Africa where the waste disposal system consists of driving a truck up to a river and dumping the trash in. Of the remaining 10%, it comes from Latin American nations that do the same thing.

Meanwhile western people see these masses of trash and plastic in the ocean and conclude the rational response is to ban straws in the western nations that do have effective waste disposal systems that don't consist of transporting said waste to the ocean and dumping it.

So the question is whether the outrage about ocean pollution is harnessed towards effectively addressing the problem or whether it is dissipated in the heat of pointless kabuki rituals that we do to absolve ourselves of guilt, even as the trash in the oceans piles up every time someone in the third world throws something away.

A lot of those effective waste disposal systems in the West, particularly for recycling, consist of paying Asian and African companies to take away the waste, so it can then be dumped in their countries/oceans or get "recycled" in places like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agbogbloshie

No, that is not a waste disposal system, it's how tech companies and other companies that sell gadgets fool their eco customers into thinking they are "recycling" something that cannot in principle be safely recycled. It is yet another example of going through a kabuki ritual rather than effectively dealing with the problem.

Agreed, but weren't you claiming earlier that poor countries are responsible for 100% of the plastic waste problem?

I think that's a good approximation. The volume of computer parts or used phones isn't significant compared to the total volume of waste produced domestically in these nations. But it's a separate tragedy that companies like Apple can pay partners to "recycle" stuff that ends up in a landfill in Nigeria somewhere, or manually stripped of copper and other parts by people working in unsafe conditions.

It's not only recycling. Currently, in my area of Poland there are gangs which bring toxic industrial waste from Western Europe in large quantities and just dump them wherever, while collecting the fee from industrial clients for properly disposing of them. This is a very recent trend, that was, from what I've read, started by China no longer importing European waste. You can only imagine how often "disposing of" such waste in China consisted of dumping it into a forest or pouring into ground or a river.

From your own source:

> While numerous international press reports have made reference to allegations that the majority of exports to Ghana are dumped, research by the US International Trade Commission found little evidence of unprocessed e-waste being shipped to Africa from the United States,[9] a finding corroborated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Memorial University, Arizona State University, UNEP, and other research.[10] In 2013, the original source of the allegation blaming foreign dumping for the material found in Agbogbloshie recanted, or rather stated it had never made the claim that 80% of US e-waste is exported.[11]

Plastic recycling done in Asia is the result of incredibly cheap return shipping as most containers come back empty.

People who get outraged about it don't understand that due to cheaper wages and energy costs, plus the need for raw feedstock in the manufacturing countries it's actually a really decent system. It's a closed loop where plastic goods are produced in Asia and recyclable plastic returns on the same ship, it gets processed and keeps raw material prices low for continued use in manufacturing for export again. It doesn't just get shipped there and thrown in a river.

The real problem, especially in South East Asia is very much cultural, many assumed that societies would become more environmentally friendly as they got richer but that is not the case, they are polluting more than ever. It's incredibly common to see people throw rubbish on the ground despite being right next to a bin. Nearly every waterway is horrendously polluted with plastic consumer products.

It's an externality that the rest of the world must bear. The other poster here is on the money, nearly all of it comes from a few catchments.

Half the plastic in the ocean comes from 5 countries, all are in Asia.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/09/asia-s-plastic-proble...

That's the theory. However, in practice plastic recycling waste is contaminated & worthless, so much so that a number of Asian countries including China and Malaysia have banned imports.

> in practice plastic recycling waste is contaminated & worthless

China is still by far the biggest plastic recycler on Earth, and that product is very likely in plenty of things you have bought this week.

What’s the waste stream looking like? Like can we trace how this trash originates and why it’s not ending up where it should? If poor areas with weak government services are the problem, then that’s a problem, no?