> Also you will notice this in poorer countries - a strong ecosystem for recycling exists everywhere outside of the US/UK. When I brought my first bike in the UK, I wanted to repair it and was told to just ditch it and get a new one !
I'd call the US, UK poor for lacking a system of recycling. And indeed in many ways they are poorer than the most well functioning societies.
> As I showed, the desperately poor folk of Rwanda managed to get their government to make a plan. Their is no reason why hundreds of millions of these less-poor folk can't do it.
Apples and oranges!
It’s a heck of a lot easier to clean up plastic waste when you aren’t having literally millions of tons[0] of it shipped to you from the United States alone.
The issue isn’t a few folks aren’t picking up trash along the river/beach, it’s many orders of magnitude difference in scale.
> Sticking something back into the ground in a safe way is non-trivial. That is to say, expensive - more expensive than waste-management companies in developing countries care to pay
You do realize the waste is created by global north capitalists (and consumed by global north capitalists and the working class), right? So why mention that it is expensive for global south countries ('developing countries'), as if it's ok that the burden of our waste is on them?
In other words the global south countries have to deal with their own waste, as well as being used as trash dump by the global north capitalists. And if they are creating a lot of waste, it's because they buy planned obsolescent black box products from global north companies (companies who 'kicked away the ladder' in the first place [1] [2]).
> Also, most companies in developed countries simply offshore polluting industrial processes to less rich countries.
Exactly what shocked me when I heard about all the plastic rubbish shipped to Malaysia. Shocked, because I was kinda proud how much rubbish we sort (Germany) only to be put into a container and sent around the globe...
Not that I wasn't aware of all the electronic waste shipped to Africa to be burnt and scavenged. It just made me a bit more cynical. Our politicians really couldn't care less, if it wasn't for the votes.
> Why don't we put our plastic in landfills then instead of trying to send it out of country?
Because some countries take a lot less money to - supposedly and according to their word - do that job cleanly for us.
We know that in fact they are probably lying, but it is quite difficult to do business like that. If we refused to make business with those countries on that basis, we would be accused of discrimination.
> because the cost of labor is cheaper, and those countries have bad waste management practices...
If you are running any kind of business, say house insulation, you take money to fully insulate a house, don't insulate 90% of the house, and then attempt to mislead the customer into thinking the job is done, you have commited fraud or embezzlement.
If these companies are paid to recycle but recycling is not happening, then someone has commited fraud. Also the contract does not say 'you can dump unresycleable stuff into the ocean' - they are suppose to dispose of it properly.
It is their job to audit their supply chains and to make sure the job is done. If I know from public sources that majority of plastic that goes to their contractors in Turkey are commiting fraud, then a company with an army of lawyers knows it too.
If they continue using contractors in knowledge that their contractors are fradulent, but are telling me that plastic is being recycled, they are defrauding me. When major western media publishes a video of masked armed men chasing their reporters in Indonesia for investigating 'recycling', it should be clear to anyone that this is massive organised crime.
You don't get to blame this on 'those countries' because our countries are not doing shit either. We created the problem and we outsourced it by contracting literal mafia in Indonesia. Your taxpayer dollars are used to pay mafia bosses and to bribe Indonesian officials, sponsoring corruption in 'those countries'.
This is not just my opinion, there have been multiple investigations and convictions for recycling fraud.
> So why mention that it is expensive for global south countries ('developing countries'), as if the burden is on them?
Wait, that's totally not what I wanted to say.
I mention it is expensive for companies there - companies operating there (including multinational), and companies shipping there. So they just don't do it, period. That they can get away with it is the very reason waste goes there, instead of staying in the West.
Of course I'm not blaming the developing countries: I'm blaming the companies of "global north capitalism" for exploiting the communities that can't afford to reject a deal that's ultimately bad from them. The problem is that the waste can be exported like this in the first place.
> because these countries have large numbers of people in poverty…
Its probably going to be a surprise to you then to learn that Kigali, Rwanda is absolutely spotless. Somehow they manage to come together every month to clean the city and have banned plastic
I know it makes 'sense' that poor people don't care about the environment, but you really should include all the data in your hypothesis.
Eh, we ship a lot of waste overseas and we delocalised a lot of industries there too. Rich countries are definitely part of the problem, it's too easy to say we don't have a role in this and point our fingers to Asia and Africa... it's time to start taking responsabilities
> I mention it is expensive for companies there - companies operating there (including multinational), and companies shipping there.
> I'm blaming the companies of "global north capitalism" for exploiting the communities that can't afford to reject a deal that's ultimately bad from them.
Got it, thanks for clarifying what you meant.
> The problem is that the waste can be exported like this in the first place.
Yes, I 100% agree with you.
>> waste-management companies in developing countries
That threw me off because in my experience often a service like this is taken care of by governments/local municipalities. So now I understand that you are talking about corporate entities managing waste.
> ? I would give up every bit of cheap plastic junk in a heartbeat if it meant my great grandchildren will have a homeland to live in peace
that's exactly what globalization did for billions of people once oppressed by colonialists Countries, such as the UK.
You could stop buying cheap plastic, but you'll never get the empire back.
Because people want their great grandchildren to have a homeland to live in peace
But you can have a poorer Country as in richer than 90% of the World, but not as rich as in the past when they exploited the poorest Countries for their own advantage, and call it homeland. You can be sure nobody wants it, you can keep it.
You also seem to believe that the point of it all is just lower prices, but the actual reality is that UK doesn't even have enough people to operate their own homeland's hospitals. [1]
You should blame your own political choices, not globalization.
> A country ought to feed its people, provide basic services like power and medical facilities on its own, without depending on imports.
Ah, wouldn't that be nice!
I live in the UK, a country that hasn't been able to feed itself using only its own produce for centuries; Napoleon called us a "nation of shopkeepers" because we couldn't survive without trade. Our staple is wheat; but our wheat isn't as good as North American wheat, and anyway we are far from self-sufficient.
We used to export coal, oil and gas; but the North Sea has largely dried up, the coal mines are mostly closed, and anyway coal is sort of un-hip these days.
I wish the NHS would stop putting services out to open tender. Private (overseas) medical companies bid for the business, so that more and more of our health services are provided privately, by US medical companies. We're perfectly capable of looking after the health of our population without overseas help; but apparently our politicians don't think it's a good idea.
I'd call the US, UK poor for lacking a system of recycling. And indeed in many ways they are poorer than the most well functioning societies.
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