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Taolan13 t1_j0r25st wrote

Reply to comment by BucksFan654 in The IEA says humanity used the greatest amount of coal in 2022 in all of human history, and that this level of consumption will continue until at least 2025. One-third of all global coal goes to generate electricity in China, and India's coal use is growing at 6% per annum. by lughnasadh

Yep. A lot of people blame USA for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch but they are only partially correct.

"Single stream waste management" was huge in the USA for years, throw all your trash and recycling together and the service sorts it for you at their processing facilities.

Processing facilities in the USA got overwhelmed, ao they subcontracted to ship containers of unsorted trash to facilities in India and China and Mexico, using the return leg of cargo ships to get things overseas.

When the processing facilities in India and China got overwhelmed, they just dumped it into the sea.

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clampie t1_j0rsymn wrote

I've never heard anyone blame the USA for the so-called garbage patch.

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MasterTacticianAlba t1_j0ths7u wrote

That sounds biased as hell.

Western countries exploit the fuck out of SEA countries.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/22/return-to-sender-sri-lanka-ships-tonnes-of-illegal-waste-back-to-the-uk

They offshore recycling and trash storage to these weak nations with under-equipped recycling and storage and then send them literal hundreds of tonnes of shit that can’t be recycled or stored… where does it go? Into the ocean. Suddenly those hundreds of tonnes of British waste are now attributed to Sri Lanka.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/01/20/asia/malaysia-plastic-waste-return-scli-intl/index.html

Malaysia sending back 100’s of containers full of trash labeled as recyclables from countries like United States, United Kingdom, France and Canada.

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clampie t1_j0uoehk wrote

Can you show me a photo of this garbage patch?

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disisdashiz t1_j0s1p4x wrote

Usa is usually the nu.ber one carbon producer I see. Though thats usually from stuff made in China. So it's weird. Cause they count the location of end stage of production

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mtj004 t1_j0s1wb8 wrote

Well. I had to watch something in school, about how it is the US fault, because they just ship their problems to other countries, without the necessary infrastructure to deal with it.

Though I do think a real big problem lies with the manafacturers. They make recycling hard as fuck, with ysing all kinds of miterails together that, that are hard to sort from eachother. Also many countries don't have the necessary infrastructure to deal with garbage, so they just throw it in the ocean, and since things like plastic degrade very slowly, they accumulate and create thebbig garbage patch.

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Si3rr4 t1_j0s2fyc wrote

What do you mean by so-called? Is it not a patch of garbage?

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Kryosite t1_j0s45nn wrote

I've never heard anyone blame a specific country at all, although if that is true, it sounds like the US is largely the source of the trash, so maybe it's just that I live in America so I don't hear the rest of the world blaming us.

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