Eleven million metric tons of plastic ends up in the oceans each year killing 700 species and contaminating the human food chain with toxic chemicals causing disease and death. However, the contribution of countries to this problem is highly skewed.
A new study finds that 81 percent of plastic waste in the ocean emanates from Asia, while the United States contributed just less than one percent, in terms of contributions to the growing crisis.
The study comes from ReUseThisBag.com (note: this is a commercial site with an interesting in selling reusable bags). The study is titled “Countries Polluting the Oceans the Most” and it is based on an analysis of different strands of academic research.
Adopting a geographical perspective, the study finds that mismanaged waste from 1000 rivers accounts for 80 percent of ocean plastic. The majority of these rivers are located in Asia.
Breaking this down to the top five countries contributing the greatest amounts of plastic pollution, the survey ranks:
- Philippines, accounting for 36.4 percent of plastic in the oceans.
- India (12.9 percent).
- Malaysia (7.5 percent).
- China (7.2 percent).
- Indonesia (5.8 percent).
This is not to say that U.S., as the largest economy is the world, is not a significant ‘plastic polluter’. The U.S. stands as is the world’s number one plastic waste creator per capita but most of this ends up in landfills, introducing toxicity into soil, and not the ocean. There is also the risk of landfill run-off into rivers and eventually depositing microplastics into the world’s seas.
The ReUseThisBag group are proposing that people take measures to reduce the plastic impact. This includes demanding local recycling improvements is important. In terms of citizen education, people should be minimizing their use of single-use plastics. This includes things like plastic bags, water bottles and take-out containers (items that tend to be used once and then discarded).
There is also the recommendation for lobbying for global action, especially with providing support for countries within Asia. Global action also includes ensuring countries instigate bans on single-use plastic bags.
