Outside experts worried that the study’s focus on pollution, rather than growing plastic production, lets the plastics industry off the hook.
By Seth Borenstein, Associated PressAn excavator cleans up plastic and other waste materials on Mahim Beach on the Arabian Sea coast on Earth Day in Mumbai, India, April 22, 2024.
The study examined plastic that goes into the open environment, not plastic that goes into landfills or is properly burned. For 15% of the world’s population, government fails to collect and dispose of waste, the study’s authors said — a big reason Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa produce the most plastic waste. That includes 255 million people in India, the study said.
The United States ranks 90th in plastic pollution with more than 52,500 tons and the United Kingdom ranks 135th with nearly 5,100 tons, according to the study. “The big time bomb of microplastics are these microplastics released in the Global South mainly,” Velis said. “We already have a huge dispersal problem. They are in the most remote places ... the peaks of Everest, in the Mariana Trench in the ocean, in what we breathe and what we eat and what we drink.”“We shouldn’t put the blame, any blame, on the Global South,” Velis said. “And we shouldn’t praise ourselves about what we do in the Global North in any way.
“These guys have defined plastic pollution in a much narrower way, as really just macroplastics that are emitted into the environment after the consumer, and it risks us losing our focus on the upstream and saying, hey now all we need to do is manage the waste better,” said Neil Tangri, senior director of science and policy at GAIA, a global network of advocacy organizations working on zero waste and environmental justice initiatives. “It’s necessary but it’s not the whole story.
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