Plastic pollution: US and UK world’s top sources of waste, suggests new study

US and UK are the world’s third-largest plastic waste producer globally that together contribute largely to marine plastic pollution, according to new research. Americans rank as high as third in the world to generate the total plastic waste dumped in the oceans as opposed to the Asian nations, unlike researchers have argued previously. Ocean Conservancy in its new findings said, “The United States is a top contributor to coastal plastic pollution" and it shipped abroad more than half of the plastic collected for recycling in the US. It added that this was mostly to the developing countries struggling to manage plastic waste. 

Researchers at Sea Education Association, DSM Environmental Services, and the University of Georgia, Ocean Conservancy published the study in the journal Science Advances on October 31, stating, that the new research must change the way the world thinks about the United States' role in tackling global plastic pollution.

Scientists asserted that the latest research analysis challenges the “widely-held belief” among the countries that the United States is adequately “managing” the plastic waste". Managing the plastic waste involves collecting and properly landfilling, recycling, however, the new finding suggest that the US has only “outsourced its massive 'plastic footprint' to developing countries", not being able to manage the waste domestically. 

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Scientists cite data from World Bank

Calling the US and UK as top contributors to the global ocean plastics crisis, the scientists at ocean Conservancy cited the latest data from the World Bank, saying, that the developed countries outsourced upwards of one million metric tons of plastic waste overseas in 2016, mainly to Asia. Many of these Asian countries still lacked the capacity to effectively manage the gargantuan amounts of plastics. “25 per cent of these exports were so low-value or so contaminated, items like thin plastic films, dirty food containers, and food wrappers, that it was nearly unrecyclable," the research found. Only 2 to 3 per cent of this plastic waste was dumped domestically in the developed nations, it added.

[The United States ranks as high as third among countries contributing to coastal plastic pollution. Credit: Ocean Conservancy]

“United States generates the most plastic waste of any country in the world (both overall and per capita),” the study said.

With just over 4 per cent of the world’s population, the US contributed to 17 per cent of the world’s plastic. According to the scientists, there's an alarming need to manage and reduce plastic waste by 40 per cent for the environmental cleanup and the “United States must play a much larger role in addressing this global plastic pollution crisis." Furthermore, the study concluded that the US must work to "advance state and federal policy to reduce its production, while also ensuring we have the capacity to manage the remaining waste stream in all communities, both domestically and abroad."

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