{"id":63762,"date":"2022-10-10T10:12:28","date_gmt":"2022-10-10T15:12:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63762"},"modified":"2022-10-10T10:12:28","modified_gmt":"2022-10-10T15:12:28","slug":"want-to-save-the-oceans-stop-recycling-plastic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63762","title":{"rendered":"Want to save the oceans? Stop recycling plastic"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"opinion_post_intro\">\n<div class=\"jsx-145673186 color-context\">\n<div class=\"inews__post-byline row middle-xs \">\n<div class=\"inews__post-byline__author-link\">\n<h3 class=\"co-author\"><a href=\"https:\/\/inews.co.uk\/opinion\/landfill-better-recycled-plastic-ends-up-sea-1891207\"><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Want to save the oceans? Stop recycling plastic<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\" excerpt\"><strong>If you put your plastic in your recycling bin, there\u2019s a decent chance it will end up in the seas off east Asia. If you put it in landfill, it\u2019s going nowhere<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<figure class=\"featured-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"i-amphtml-fill-content i-amphtml-replaced-content\" src=\"https:\/\/wp.inews.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/SEI_15445071.jpg?resize=640,360&amp;strip=all&amp;quality=90\" alt=\"This photo taken on May 12, 2018 shows a boy looking out from a window of a house beside a garbage-filled creek in Manila. The blanket of trash on a creek that flows between the makeshift homes of a Manila slum is so dense it appears one could walk across it like a paved street. \/ AFP PHOTO \/ NOEL CELISNOEL CELIS\/AFP\/Getty Images\" \/><figcaption>Plastic in a river in Manila, the Philippines, where a significant amount of Western \u2018recycling\u2019 plastic is sent (Photo: Noel Celis\/AFP\/Getty)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<div class=\"article-content\">\n<p>Recycling plastic is a bad idea and, until we can be sure of where it\u2019s going, we should stop doing it. We should put plastic in the landfill, instead.<\/p>\n<p>This sounds like a really spicy hot take, but it\u2019s not. I think it is pretty much accepted among people who study these things. The oceans are full of plastic, and that\u2019s bad \u2013 but none of the plastic in the oceans comes from a British landfill. It almost all comes from developing-world countries, and by recycling we make the problem worse.<\/p>\n<p>About\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/sciadv.aaz5803\">0.05 per cent of plastic waste<\/a> in the UK is \u201cmismanaged\u201d \u2013 that is, dropped as litter or dumped into the environment, or left in open landfill. By contrast, in India, that figure is over 20 per cent \u2013 400 times higher. China is comparable, at about 19 per cent.<\/p>\n<p>In the Philippines, that\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/ourworldindata.org\/plastic-pollution#plastic-waste-by-country\">figure is about 6.5 per cent<\/a>, still more than 100 times the UK level but not quite as dramatic. But the Philippines is a collection of small islands, so plastic litter\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/ourworldindata.org\/plastic-pollution#probability-that-mismanaged-plastic-waste-gets-emitted-to-the-ocean\">easily reaches small rivers there<\/a>\u00a0and ends up in the sea. Malaysia, similarly, has\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/ourworldindata.org\/plastic-pollution#plastic-waste-by-country\">less of a problem<\/a>\u00a0with mismanaged waste, but large percentages of what\u00a0<em>is<\/em>\u00a0mismanaged\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/ourworldindata.org\/plastic-pollution#probability-that-mismanaged-plastic-waste-gets-emitted-to-the-ocean\">ends up in the sea<\/a>. So the average bit of plastic in one of those countries is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/ourworldindata.org\/ocean-plastics\">pretty likely to end up in the sea<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Want to save the oceans? Stop recycling plastic If you put your plastic in your recycling bin, there\u2019s a decent chance it will end up in the seas off east Asia. If you put it in landfill, it\u2019s going nowhere Plastic in a river in Manila, the Philippines, where a significant amount of Western \u2018recycling\u2019 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[630,33251,638,671,33250],"class_list":["post-63762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-plastic","tag-plastic-recycling","tag-pollution","tag-recycling","tag-tom-chivers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63763,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63762\/revisions\/63763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}