[OC] Plastic waste emitted to the ocean per countrySubmitted by sometiara1 t3_113mvpx in dataisbeautiful
Soupmother t1_j8r8fjf wrote
Reply to comment by zeelicent in [OC] Plastic waste emitted to the ocean per country by sometiara1
I think the chart could be clearer about the fact that the majority of plastic waste emitted to the ocean by the Philippines is shipped there by wealthy countries' rotten "recycling" schemes. The Philippines itself is one of the smaller producers of plastic waste.
malenfant21 t1_j8riwca wrote
You can see a much smaller circle showing the Philippines plastic waste production, and the much larger circle showing their plastic waste emission.
I know they stopped accepting Canadian plastic waste (I agree on recycling being mostly a scheme), but I have no idea what the Philippines' planned to do with the plastic waste.
Wouldn't Canada be able to bury non biodegradable plastics somewhere in the uninhabitable Canadian Shield. Maybe I should take out a billion dollar loan to start a company that imports and indefinitely buries international plastic waste? N/m back to Reddit.
Boatster_McBoat t1_j8ro3eu wrote
There are different scales between the two different coloured circles. They do not appear to be directly comparable in size. Philippines has been rated as highest per capita emitter of mismanaged plastic. Presumably this relates in part to it's geography, lots of rivers, lots of coastline vs land mass.
Soupmother t1_j8rowk7 wrote
Yep - I made the 101 error of not checking the scales!
hellcat_uk t1_j8rgxr9 wrote
Presumably they are paid for this recycling they're meant to be doing? Where's that money going? Not into the rivers with the water clearly.
Melmortu t1_j8rlw4l wrote
Doesn't work like that, these are plastics that are badly classified and dirty. Classifying and recycling them in developed countries is not economically viable, but with cheap labor from poor countries it is, so they buy them for nearly nothing, and they process them.
Thing is, most of it is not useful, so all of that unusable, unrecyclable plastic ends un in a poor country without the means to get rid of it. China used to do this until they banned the import of those plastics because the impact on people's health was more expensive to treat than the economic margin, and now it's done in SE Asia.
So, the blame is on developed countries for producing an incredible amount of unrecyclable plastics and shipping it there, not on poor people trying to make a living out of recycling it.
Breaker-of-circles t1_j8ruqgl wrote
Canada's more advanced tech can't recycle their own shit, then they pay peanuts to poor countries to take their trash so they can appear good in charts like this.
What a joke.
Tropink t1_j8u5jaw wrote
Less than 2% of waste is traded internationally, the blame is still on undeveloped countries that just use the ocean as a dump
Breaker-of-circles t1_j8ujbf5 wrote
Percentage vs raw numbers. Interesting argumentative decision given that the raw numbers and their visual representation in this graph is bare for all to see.
Edit: I assume this is your source for that 2%
https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-waste-trade
While the article is indeed well researched, it doesn't address where the plastics in the ocean were produced. It only talked about total plastic pollution, which is not what the discussion is about.
I mean if you look at one of the graphs there, Europe, Japan, and North America still ship more than 4M tonnes of plastic to Asian countries.
https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-sankey-1536x1175.png
The 970k tonnes fits very well inside that 4M tonnes.
Tropink t1_j8u5iuc wrote
Less than 2% of waste is traded internationally, the blame is still on undeveloped countries that just use the ocean as a dump
_AlreadyTaken_ t1_j8ryzy3 wrote
>Most plastic waste is traded within world regions, rather than between them
>Where does plastic waste flow across the world?
>Europe is the region that exports the most plastic, but it’s also the region that imports the most.
>This is true more generally. Most plastic is traded within a given region. European countries export most plastic to other European countries. Asian countries export most to other Asian countries.
>In the visualization, we see the flow of plastic across the world. On the left we have the exporters of plastic waste; on the right, we see where that plastic ends up. The height of each bar is proportional to the amount of plastic that is traded.
>Europe is the biggest exporter of plastic. But, it’s also the biggest importer. Many countries across Europe trade with one another. At the national level, Germany is the biggest exporter and importer – it trades different plastics with its neighbors including the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, and Switzerland.
>This is also true of Asia, where Japan is the biggest exporter to other countries in Asia.
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments