Choking on Plastic
Imagine a garbage truck dumping plastic waste into the sea every minute, every day, for a year. Eight million tonnes of plastic waste. That’s how much plastic trash is in the world’s oceans every year
With Asia home to the fastest growing economies in the world, it is not surprising that a 2015 Ocean Conservancy report stated that more than half of this plastic trash in our oceans comes from just five Asian countries: China Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.
According to a November 2017 report conducted by the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig, Germany, up to 95 percent of the eight million tonnes of plastic waste polluting the world’s seas and oceans come from just 10 river systems. And among these 10 rivers, eight of them are in Asia. Five of these filthiest rivers are in China alone: the Yangtze River (ranking first), Yellow River (thirrd), Hai River (fourth), Pearl River and Amur (Hei Long Jiang) River. In second place is the Indus River, while the holy Ganges River takes sixth place. The Mekong River, which runs through six countries in Southeast Asia, takes the 10th spot.
One of the main by-products of growth is consumption. According to the World Bank, India was one of the fastest growing economies in Asia in 2018. Cambodia and the Philippines were also in the top 10 fastest growing economies of 2018. In a list of the top 10 projected fastest growing cities by GDP between 2019 and 2035 compiled by Research institute Oxford Economics, all 10 cities are in India. Outside of India, Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, is expected to see the fastest growth.
In the pages that follow, ASIAN Geographic looks into the plastic consumption that directly contributes to plastic pollution, the underlying reasons behind the inadequate cleanup, the impact of the pollution on biodiversity across land and sea, and the collective solutions needed for a cleaner Earth.