The majority of the world is working together to reverse the massive plastic pollution problem. But, the world’s leading producer of plastic waste, the U.S., hasn’t signed on and isn’t following the rules. At the start of the year, when the new rules were just being implemented, the fact remained that the U.S. had not agreed to the amendment despite producing most of the world’s plastic waste. Proponents held that the amendment would still apply to the U.S. anytime it tried to trade plastic waste with any of the participating 187 countries, many of which are poor and developing nations, CNN reported.
According to the Basel Action Network (BAN), a nonprofit organization that lobbies against the plastic waste trade, participating nations are prohibited from trading waste with countries that have not ratified the Basel Convention, The Maritime Executive reported. This creates an effective ban on plastic waste trade between the U.S. and most of the world, and makes U.S. plastic export shipments ”criminal traffic as soon as the ships get on the high seas,” BAN told The Maritime Executive.
The Maritime Executive also noted that America’s plastic waste shipments will continue to be associated with ”uncontrolled dumping” in developing countries, and that much of the plastic waste collected in the U.S. under the guise of recycling actually ends up in overseas landfills and the oceans. In fact, a new Woods Hole study found that the U.S. is likely the world’s third-largest source of ocean plastic, not just because it is the world’s largest producer of plastic waste, but also because recyclables being sent to the developing world are often mishandled and discarded into the ocean.
Source: Ecowatch
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