Re: The world has plenty of plastic
The problem with studies that make and publish opinions about who the top polluters are makes people who don't live in those places, complacent.
I have mentioned before, when sailing in the Med' and other places, if you are doing the morning watch from 04:00 to 08:00, the sea is often like a mirror, super calm, at that time you can see beads of plastic floating on the surface every couple of inches.
Multiply that up by the whole of the Med' let alone the rest of the oceans and how much plastic is on the surface alone? Then consider how much more has sunk and is slowly releasing a slew of unnatural chemical additives into the environment.
Bob mentioned he doubts the US and the West dump plastics in the oceans but when you allow for the fact that many garden and potting soils for drainage contain styrofoam beads along with all the other microplastics that drain into the rivers and oceans, then we in the West are far from not guilty.
Even the lint that is released from modern synthetic clothing amounts to significant amounts of unwanted plastic in the environment, then there is tyre and brake dust that accounts for over 550,000 tons of ocean micro plastic pollution each year according to the EPA. Presumably EPA figure are for the US only.
We all have a lot to answer for.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
