Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue is that 90% of the plastic in the ocean is dumped from 10 rivers in Asia and Africa where the waste disposal system consists of driving a truck up to a river and dumping the trash in. Of the remaining 10%, it comes from Latin American nations that do the same thing. Meanwhile western people see these masses of trash and plastic in the ocean and conclude the rational response is to ban straws in the western…
A lot of those effective waste disposal systems in the West, particularly for recycling, consist of paying Asian and African companies to take away the waste, so it can then be dumped in their countries/oceans or get "recycled" in places like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agbogbloshie
> While numerous international press reports have made reference to allegations that the majority of exports to Ghana are dumped, research by the US International Trade Commission found little evidence of unprocessed e-waste being shipped to Africa from the United States,[9] a finding corroborated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Memorial University, Arizona State University, UNEP, and other research.[10] In 2013, the original source of the allegation blaming foreign dumping for the material found in Agbogbloshie recanted, or rather stated it had never made the claim that 80% of US e-waste is exported.[11]