The US is one of the world’s biggest sources of plastic pollution
Plastic waste along the shores of Hong Kong. | Photo by Nick Mallos / Ocean Conservancy The US is responsible for way more of the plastic polluting the world's oceans than previously thought, a new study reveals. When it comes to the countries that contributed the most to coastal plastic pollution, the US could rank as high as third in the world, it estimates.
[The US] outsourced our waste problem to developing countries"
Plastic pollution globally is at crisis level," says Nick Mallos, senior director of the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy's Trash Free Seas program and co-author of the paper published today in the journal Science Advances. Most problematic is that rather than looking the problem in the eye, for more than 30 years, [the US] outsourced our waste problem to developing countries," Mallos says.
For years, Asian...