US and UK Citizens Are World's Biggest Sources of Plastic Waste 103
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The U.S. and UK produce more plastic waste per person than any other major countries, according to new research. The analysis also shows the U.S. produces the most plastic waste in total and that its citizens may rank as high as third in the world in contributing to plastic pollution in the oceans. Previous work had suggested Asian countries dominated marine plastic pollution and placed the U.S. in 20th place, but this did not account for U.S. waste exports or illegal dumping within the country. Data from 2016, the latest available, show that more than half of the plastic collected for recycling in the U.S. was shipped abroad, mostly to countries already struggling to manage plastic waste effectively. The researchers said years of exporting had masked the U.S.'s enormous contribution to plastic pollution.
The latest study, published in the journal Science Advances, used World Bank data on waste generation in 217 countries. It focused on the U.S. and used additional data on littering and illegal dumping within the country and on contamination by exported plastic, which is likely to be dumped rather than recycled. The researchers found the U.S. produced the most plastic waste by World Bank reckoning, at 34m tonnes in 2016, but the total increased to 42m tonnes when the additional data was considered. India and China were second and third, but their large populations meant their figures for per capita plastic waste was less than 20% of that of U.S. consumers. Among the 20 nations with the highest total plastic waste production, the UK was second to the U.S. per capita, followed by South Korea and Germany. "When the researchers estimated how much of each country's plastic waste ends up in the oceans, Indonesia and India ranked highest," the report adds. "The U.S. ranked between third and eleventh, depending on the assumptions made about waste leakage into the environment. The analysis found that up to 1 million tons of exported U.S. plastic waste ended up as marine pollution."
The latest study, published in the journal Science Advances, used World Bank data on waste generation in 217 countries. It focused on the U.S. and used additional data on littering and illegal dumping within the country and on contamination by exported plastic, which is likely to be dumped rather than recycled. The researchers found the U.S. produced the most plastic waste by World Bank reckoning, at 34m tonnes in 2016, but the total increased to 42m tonnes when the additional data was considered. India and China were second and third, but their large populations meant their figures for per capita plastic waste was less than 20% of that of U.S. consumers. Among the 20 nations with the highest total plastic waste production, the UK was second to the U.S. per capita, followed by South Korea and Germany. "When the researchers estimated how much of each country's plastic waste ends up in the oceans, Indonesia and India ranked highest," the report adds. "The U.S. ranked between third and eleventh, depending on the assumptions made about waste leakage into the environment. The analysis found that up to 1 million tons of exported U.S. plastic waste ended up as marine pollution."
pay for it up front is the only way (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:pay for it up front is the only way (Score:5, Interesting)
That will never work and will turn into a "plastic credits" bullshit, just like carbon pollution.
What we need to do is to ditch single-use standard plastics (PET, PP, etc) and switch to plant-based alternatives such as PLA. Keep the good, though standard plastics for things that are used more than once (manufacturing, parts, etc).
Re: pay for it up front is the only way (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: pay for it up front is the only way (Score:5, Interesting)
In the US and UK, sure. Seems the European Union takes a more enlightened approach [bbc.com] to this.
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Re: pay for it up front is the only way (Score:5, Informative)
When living in the Wirral, we could put plastic bottles in the recycle bin, but yoghurt cartons (for instance) couldn't be recycled and had to go in general waste. In the Scottish Borders (where we are now), all plastic can go in the recycle bin, except black waste bags and polystyrene.
Of all the plastics, I hate polystyrene with a vengeance. Horrible stuff that can't be recycled. Also bulky and fragments into pieces when you try and break it up. Nasty stuff . Should be banned.
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How do you fuck 'em at the checkout?
All "choices" I got are equally harmful.
This is precisely what governments and regulation are for.
Or rather taking out all the psychos who don't care about harmig others, and shoot them if they ever dare to re-enter the country again. (Online and via the media too.)
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Carbon credits are not bullshit, and the sooner people understand that, the sooner they can pick futures (basically politicians and policy) that provide a legitimate path to meaningful reduction.
Re:pay for it up front is the only way (Score:4, Funny)
So you can pollute as much as you want it just costs you a bit more?
Re:pay for it up front is the only way (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets use the original name for these... indulgences.
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No, because when someone paid an indulgence nothing happened.
Carbon credits are a way of pricing in external costs, and prices are the way that markets make decisions. There are other ways of pricing in external costs, but pretending there's no such thing as an external cost is just a denial of capitalism.
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So you can pollute as much as you want it just costs you a bit more?
Still better than now.
You can pollute as much as you want and not pay anything.
You could even take that money and spend it on cleaning up pollution. How amazing.
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Have you never met our Calabrese and Siciliano friends, the mafia? Or patent trolls?
The Mafia is a good counter-example.
Patent trolls are not. Patent trolls rely on government-granted monopolies enforced by government-run courts.
Re:pay for it up front is the only way (Score:4, Insightful)
So you can pollute as much as you want it just costs you a bit more?
There's a limit on the available carbon credits.
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It's not an analogy, it's how it works and by carbon credits being traded it makes it an efficient market that can be driven down to zero net emissions. If you want to put the full cost on the producer directly that's great but you'll need a plan to handle the fallout. Carbon credits has only been implemented in EU and there are real world consequences that need and has been considered.
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So how do the carbon credits really work then?
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Yes. Economic incentives work best, particularly where large groups, like big corporations, are concerned. Currently, not polluting is the more expensive alternative. Carbon pricing aims to make it the less expensive alternative.
The problem with carbon credits is they're a made up system subject to lots of abuses. A straight up carbon tax is better.
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Yes, that's the ideal. Collect tax money from people doing bad stuff like polluting, rather than people doing good stuff like earning money. That way, you disincentivize polluting and incentivize growing the economy.
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Carbon credits are not bullshit
In theory, carbon credits are a good idea.
In practice, they are completely corrupted.
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Carbon credits are not bullshit
In theory, carbon credits are a good idea.
In practice, they are completely corrupted.
Can you explain why you believe that?
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It must be true, Qanon says so, no further proof required. Seriously though these kind of arguments do seem like pure fantasy to me but they could be rooted in lies at sites like Zerohedge, Infowars etc.
Humans have a problem, on one hand you're supposed to be completely tolerant of people believing in fairy tales like the bible and the quran but on the other hand people believe in the crap that Qanon and the conspiracy mills make up and since those are beliefs then by extension we should be tolerant of thos
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Just shut up please. Go look for conspiracy theorists under the bed, and let man explain.
Btw: Fly Swatter gave a good reason for why they are corrupted below:
https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
Now go hide on the closet. Cause the conspiracy theorists are out there to get you. Ooohhh! *makes halloween noises*
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Where is the corruption? So long as the amount of available carbon credits continues to decrease over time at a quick enough rate then the system works.
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Fly Swatter gave a terrible explanation, it doesn't satisfy any reasonable definition of corruption nor is it an accurate describe any real world carbon credit system.
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Carbon credits doesn't work the way you believe.
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Credit carbon systems work best when they are market efficient. What you seem to be describing is the California system (The EU only doesn't work that way), and if you believe there's a system that's politically viable and as efficient for California I'm sure they'll be happy to hear from you. Take out real world viability and anyone can come up with something better.
Re: pay for it up front is the only way (Score:5, Informative)
It's been working in Germany for decades now. No credits bullshit just a separate garbage collection system paid-for upfront by the manufacturer. As far as the end consumer is concerned, he/she only puts their plastic garbage can in front od their yard every other week or so and that's it.
Of course, if garbage disposal companies are corrupt and dump it in the ocean that's another deal... that needs to be adressed first, but that should be doable once proper financing is secured.
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We should be wary of getting distracted from more important environmental issues.
Fossil fuel consumption in electricity generation and transportation is a far bigger problem than plastics.
If we are going to expend political capital to implement a new tax, it would be way better to tax coal or gasoline rather than straws and water bottles.
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Covid has significantly reduced not only air travel but any travel and to some extent energy use, it's not enough we'll have to work on all fronts.
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This approach has been mostly (although not entirely) successful with state deposit laws for car batteries and tires. You pay the deposit when you buy the thing and get it back when you dispose of it properly.
Before these went into place illegal tire dumps grew at astonishing rates, sometimes becoming "tire mountains" with millions of tires in them. One tire dump in Ohio had 80 million tires in it and each tire when it's dry weighs about 22 pounds. I know of one case in Florida where the dump was so big
Re: pay for it up front is the only way (Score:1)
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Passing on the cost to the consumer is best, possibly only way to discourage the use. Let's see, I can buy this package of plant-fibre based forks for $1, or this pack of plastic forks for $50. Hm....
Lol. ASCII art.
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It is worse. (Score:3, Insightful)
They authored and distributed the ideology of shameless, self-serving consumerism, which justifies the wanton destruction of our habitat, and today are trying to propagate that in space, too.
Incidentally, it is the US and the UK where the democratic form of government was resoundingly corrupted by capitalism and it is those two countries that spread the corruption of democracy elsewhere.
Lovely.
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Most of those exports go to the USA don't they... What if you stopped buying so much plastic crap? They would surely stop making it wouldn't they.
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I don't think that un-"corrupted" democracy ever existed, to be frank.
I mean how does anyone figure a "represtative democracy" would ever not be "corrupt", given that leaders are leaders specifically because they don't follow or obey others' wishes by "representing" them And obedient people hate being in a position of having to make decisions, and would never go into politics in the first place.
The only solutions to that equation are dictators and lobbyist politicians.
And they are only un-corrupted in the
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I don't think that un-"corrupted" democracy ever existed, to be frank.
Practically, you're right, but the problem that worries me isn't the modicum of corruption in any government that is inevitable. In a functional democracy as it is described in theory that would be taken care by the police and the courts.
The problem I'm talking about is the directed process by which democratic governments are completely and totally subverted to the point where "the people" stop having any impact on "the issues" by a small group of largest asset holders.
This is a design defect of the democra
Japan? Tokyo? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a hard time understanding how Japan didnâ(TM)t even hit the radar of their statistics. When I was in Japan, everything, including the wrapping, was wrapped in plastic.
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I live in Europe and although for single use plastic utensils are dominant they are seemingly being phased out by wood, I believe cost isn't as much a limiting factor as supply, but I might be wrong (plastic straws for example isn't banned, but they are not readily available, the larger chain stores don't want to sell them and few want to buy, paper and metall straws are everywhere). It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that dispensers can be made zero touch just like some soap dispensers available,
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Zero-touch soap dispensers are literally one of the stupidest ideas ever though. ... Wat...
The only situations where you ever use soap, is when your hands are already dirty and wash your them right after.
Like "My hands are dirty! imma need to wash them! So let's not get my hands dirty!"
Even dumber, when the tap is *not* zero-touch, and you contaminate it with your dirty hands to open it, so you're certain your clean hands will get contaminated again when you close it again. Why did you wash your hands again
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Zero touch soap and zero touch water faucets works in public restrooms because people are stupid and touch all over before and after washing their hands.
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I lived in Japan for two years. They are the world champions of packaging, wrapping, and containering. There is a plastic wrap over a plastic box containing plastic bags filled with individually plastic-wrapped snacks, all placed in a handy plastic shopping bag.
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Having lived in both places, I am certain that the average person in Tokyo uses and disposes of way more plastic per day than people I knew in the US.
TFA seems to be saying that if that plastic gets recycled or disposed of "properly" rather than shipped to China for disposal, then it doesn't count as waste?
The fact of the matter is, while Japan does recycle PET plastics, all other plastics are burned, even those collected in the "recycle bin". This study must not be counting any of that as waste.
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There is no PET recycling.
The stuff doesn't last more than an alibi amount of cycles, and even then, it is more expensive than recreating it from scratch, so if it is done, then not because PET is "recyclable" in the sense that we normally think of.
Re:Japan? Tokyo? (Score:4, Informative)
There is no PET recycling.
LOL no.
According to the EPA, [epa.gov] PET is the second most recycled plastic in the US, with a recycling rate of 29.1.% Japan's rate is 72%, Europe's rate is 48%, and India's rate is 90%. [wikipedia.org]
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Germany too.
And then we throw it in one big furnace, and burn it for energy.
Still gotta sort though. Rules are more important than human lives. -- Germans
Plastic waste must be a good thing (Score:2)
What EXACTLY did we expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
Buy any new electronic device. Every fucking thing is individually wrapped. The power cord has a plastic twist tie, with a plastic three-prong "protector", all wrapped in a plastic bag. FUCKING. WHY.
No, in this case, I really don't give a shit how many "jobs" that generates. You're killing the planet with stupid senseless shit. Knock it off already. And because manufacturers don't give a shit, and clearly consumers could care even less, we will have to make it illegal and punishable with massive fines (percentage of gross profits) in order make any progress with this problem.
No credits. No carbon offset bullshit. Just fucking ban it and grow up already. We lived without single-use plastics before, we sure as hell can do it again.
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Buy any new electronic device. Every fucking thing is individually wrapped. The power cord has a plastic twist tie, with a plastic three-prong "protector", all wrapped in a plastic bag. FUCKING. WHY.
Because you wouldn't want to get fingerprints on the prongs while they're putting it in the box, would you? :-D
Seriously, I hear you, and I fully agree. The amount of plastic waste in products that I buy has skyrocketed over the past couple of years. Last week, I got a SanDisk SSD, and as you might expect, it shipped in a hard plastic tray, and had those stupid plastic wrappers to hold the (12 inch) USB-C and USB-C-to-USB cables in tight little bundles. What you might not expect was that it also had a cl
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That page is censored for EU/Swiss viewers, by the way. Too much of a hassle to work around it right now. Anyone here who can tell me what it's about?
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But the height of wastefulness has to be Amazon. Today, I received four packages. One was a factory shipping box from a third-party seller. Amazon could easily have put the other three into a single cardboard box, but instead, they shipped one in a paper wrapper and the other two in separate plastic bubble mailers. Why!?!?!
I've thought about this when receiving multiple boxes at once. I'm betting the items didn't all originate at the same fulfillment center. They each need their own box to get to the final shipping location. At that point, why would you spend the time to repackage them?
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I've thought about this when receiving multiple boxes at once. I'm betting the items didn't all originate at the same fulfillment center.
It's quite possible that they're coming from different fulfillment centers, but the stated reason for the discounts for things like subscribe-and-save and Amazon Day is that they can bring things in from other fulfillment centers and then bundle them into one package to save on shipping. So none of that makes sense if they aren't actually doing that.
They each need their own box to get to the final shipping location. At that point, why would you spend the time to repackage them?
Because it's wasteful and a pain for customers. Amazon could very easily use resealable zipper bags for the items sent from one fulfillment center to another,
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I've actually noticed that there's much less plastic in electronics packaging in recent years than 10 years ago. A smartphone comes in an all-cardboard box. Larger items come in boxes padded with molded-pulp spacers (the eggbox-like stuff) rather than with styrofoam. Webshops pad their boxes with kraft paper or compostable cornstarch packing peanuts rather than styrofoam peanuts. Some webshops use PE air-filled pillows, but at least those can be flattened and recycled with other plastic waste unlike styrofo
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So easily you slip into authoritarianism and antidemocratic rhetoric. And yet you constantly accuse everyone else of doing the same thing. This is psychological projection, where one attributes one's unacceptable thoughts to The Other and then criticizes The Other for one's own faults. It's a defense against damaging cognitive dissonance and is old as the hills. It's like the preacher who constantly preaches against the danger of homosexuals and then gets caught sucking men off in a public bathroom. Same exact thing.
Not telling humans when they're wrong, created many of the issues with weak-minded humans today, and allowed Greed N. Corruption to dominate the conversation.
Perhaps you can now explain in a logical rational manner why a power cord needs to be wrapped thrice in wasteful shit in order to deliver it to a human, and more importantly why we should never question that. Let me guess; we now consider questioning stupidity some kind of "attack" against feelings. Yup. That's worked out so well, as ignorance gave
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Come to Germany.
Telling people they're wrong is our national pastime. And day job. And in-between.
Don't expect our "wrong" to have anything to do with harmfulness or anything. ;)
Only with rule disobedience. If those rules themselves harm, is literally irrelevant. (I mean that unrelated to the current Corona drama. Unless you blame the Prussians for.Corona.
Re: WindBourne cleanup aisle 3 !! (Score:2)
Blame citizens? (Score:5, Insightful)
The individual citizens don't really have much choice in the matter...
Most goods come with excessive packaging, often plastic. The vast majority of my trash every week is packaging.
For actual products, it's a race to the bottom - most people only look for the cheapest price and don't consider quality, longevity, repairability etc. Low quality products sell more, fail quicker and become waste.
Manufacturers spend a lot of money on packaging to make the items stand out on store shelves, something in plain and minimal packaging would sell less, so no manufacturer is going to voluntarily do that. This needs intervention by the government, as the market itself won't reduce packaging until the cost of packaging outweighs the extra sales from eye catching packaging.
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Not only that, but I am a net negative producer of litter. Whenever I see litter in my neighborhood and I happen to put the garbage container out, I pick it up.
I'm doing everything right. Now how am I supposed to have influence over this plastic waste?
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You are spot on.
If there were two identical products and I knew one had sensible packaging, I'd go for that one. But there often aren't two identical products, and if there are, they're packaged the same, or I have no way of knowing how it's packaged until I get it.
The only way to deal with this is to either tax plastic to the point it hurts enough that companies start to focus on reducing it, or to ban it altogether.
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The problem with taxing or banning plastic is that you also punish the use cases where plastic is appropriate.
I'd say regulate packaging specifically, since packaging is designed to be discarded as soon as the product is sold. For goods which are intended to be durable, plastic can often be a reasonable material.
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Where is use of plastic appropriate?
Lost Me at Depending on Assumptions (Score:3)
...depending on the assumptions..., ya, another junk article.
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Then I hope you don't plan to leave your bed tonorrow.
Cause it is depending on the assumptions that the floor still exists and that your feet won't fall straight through it.
Take-aways (Score:1)
End the recycling illusion (Score:5, Insightful)
The plastics are not "recycled". That was an myth sold to us when manufacturers switched from glass bottles to single use plastics. It was never a real thing, but an excuse to sell the new types of containers.
Metals can be recycled, glass can be recycled, paper can be recycled. They have high value (as long as they are clean, throw your dirty pizza boxes in the trash).
But plastics have very low value. At best the recycling company should ask for payment to reprocess those items.
What we can practically do instead:
1) Use less plastic. No more invulnerable clamshells. (That should also reduce ER visits as a bonus). No more plastics plates, use paper instead.
2) Re-use plastics. Many high quality plastics can be reused (like the water bottles, computer chips, and others)
3) Throw them in the trash, and bury in a landfill. The worst place plastics can go are the oceans. They kill wildlife, and/or become micro-plastics and enter our food and bodies. When buried in a far away desert, distant from fault lines, it has zero chance of contaminating the nature.
As a society we cannot survive without plastics. But that does not mean we should be smart about it.
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Well, technially, you can "recycle" them... the same way you "recycle" humans or dinosaurs. ;)
I'm all for synthetic hydrocarbons. With a more compact and efficient process than nature offers. But using only sunlight as energy too.
Plastic Waste is Bad – But Research Looks We (Score:3)
On the other hand The OP links to an interesting article in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, but that, in turn, bases its conclusions on a study in the journal “Science Advances”, which is where the story starts to look a bit weak:-
1. All of the data is old. If you read the entire article, the most recent data that the paper cites as a source is dated 2016.
2. The paper points out that a vast amount of plastic waste is traded internationally [i.e. developed nations including the UK and US collect their plastic waste into bales which are then shipped overseas, which is where the actual waste occurs. But the paper then goes on to say, “To our knowledge, no quantitative estimates exist of the proportion of material exported for recycling that is ultimately discarded as waste or of the methods of disposal. From composition studies of plastic and paper scrap bales from MRFs in North America and the United Kingdom, we conservatively estimated that between 15 and 25% of material exported in plastic scrap bales, and 2 to 5% of material exported in paper scrap bales, consisted of low-value plastics and plastic waste that would likely have been discarded by processing facilities in importing countries.”
So let’s just think about that for a second: the paper is stating that the UK and US export a very considerable amount of their plastic waste overseas for recycling, admits that there is no way to estimate what portion of that exported material eventually becomes waste, but elects to “conservatively estimate” that 15-25% of exported material is not recycled.
I think I’m starting to see how this paper concluded that the UK and US were the “World’s Biggest Source” of plastic waste
3. In the section of the paper entitled “Materials and Methods”, it explains that the research is in part based upon estimates from the World Bank (on the state of solid waste management globally). This 2018 paper, which you can download from here [slashdot.org], is packed full with some very significant assumptions and generalizations. For example, take a look at Figure B2.1.1 “Waste Generation: Actual and Model Prediction”, which is an attempt by the authors to show how their predicted model is derived from a best-fit curve between data points. Two issues with this: first, the “actual data points” and their sources are not cited, so its impossible to judge the accuracy; second, look at the deviation from the authors’ proposed prediction curve. For starters, most of the data points seem to be harvested from low “GDP per Capita” countries; second, the deviations look in some cases to be in the order of 30-40% from their concluded estimates. But if the data comes primarily from low “GDP per Capita” countries, how come the headlines specifically quote the UK and the US as the main culprits?
The paper also explains that whilst some of the data it analyzes comes from the last few years, their core data (whatever that is) spans 2 decades. This is an important distinction and we’re fortunate that the point is being made: do you believe that our recycling capabilities from 20 years ago compare with those we achieve today?
In short, the more I read, the more I thought that this was a really excellent idea that had been attempted maybe a little bit “too early” or with data that wasn’t quite robust enough.
That does not in any way mean that the research, analysis or conclusions are wrong, just that we might want to verify the data before we start reacting to it.
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There's no stopping a bomb (Score:2)
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At the scale of Earth's history, this is more of an ultra-fast C4 bang.
It will leave a layer in Earth's crust, almost too thin to notice.
Everything is plastic (Score:2)
Makes sense in the US. Everything is plastic. Tits, smiles, Eiffel towers, food, politicians, social behavior, ..
But for the UK ....I thought everything was rain and misery there ...
What is the problem? (Score:2)
Good! (Score:1)
This means that US and UK have high standards of living where people are not chained down by repetitive labor and have more free time.
Not a big tree hugger, but Iâ(TM)m over it to (Score:1)
I blame McDonaldâ(TM)s Happy Meal (Score:2)
Ummmm (Score:1)