That's what plastic recycling actually looks like. The plastic waste is removed from its place of origin and introduced into the water cycle some place else.

wHy aRe ThE pOoR CoUnTrIeS pOlLutInG sO MuCh??!1!!!!?11

Because we export our fucking plastic there to absolve ourselves of the responsibility. Exporting waste to third-world countries should quite simply be banned and I'm glad at least the EU will do so.

The EU has agreed to ban exports of plastic waste to countries outside the group of mostly rich OECD nations by November 2026, yet half is still being sent to those destinations. Much of the remainder goes to Turkey, now the largest recipients of European plastic waste.

With the ban approaching, there are concerns that all exports could be redirected to developing OECD countries such as Turkey, as well as parts of eastern Europe, which lack the capacity to manage higher volumes.

Then they can finally shut up about "most pollution to seas some from these 3 Asian countries" and walk in their shoes for a while. Even the UK is suffocating under their waste and it's being dumped everywhere. Tough to blame immigrants when you're doing the polluting and it ends up in your own backyard.

But the people will find a way to blame immigrants anyway. Anything to avoid taxing the rich and their wealth.

Germany recycles the most plastic in Europe, while also using the most plastic. So I'm not surprised. I personallyprefer shopping in Turkish supermarkets in Germany to avoid plastic packaging (I bring my own).

We live in a system where costs are only realized at the manufacture of a product and not at its disposal. The inevitable outcome is cheap production wins, leading to throwaway societies, and ignoring the cost of disposal, which is also an important, even critical cost of associated with the product. Society is left to foot the bill, while the manufacturers prance away without having to cover the costs of the problems they created.

The solution is simple - if a company manufactures and sells a product, then that company should be responsible for its disposal as well. This will encourage longer lasting products and reduced environmental damage as well. Plastics are not as cheap as they seem when you factor in the full lifecycle of the costs associated with them.

It would be difficult to implement in practice, but pales in comparison to the massive damage we're doing to the environment.

Yeah… Recycing mixed plastics was always a scam…

Ok, exporting plastic waste is not that good, but: the export champion of the world from yesteryear is so back.

/s

every item has the same packaging size as before with half teh stuff inside. so you create double the waste to feed yourself

that's... not a lot. at 83 million people that's less than 10kg per person per year.