So you're saying _USA_ waterways are not a sink for plastic pollution (and source of ocean plastics)? Or you just think a professor of USA history should point out parallel issues in other countries?
Plastic pollution is a general problem for everyone, including in the USA.
If we're talking specifically about plastic pollution in waterways, the USA is nowhere close to the top of the list for that particular problem.
In the USA, we have the means to recycle most plastics, but there needs to be political will to get it done. Merely relying on industries to make a profit off of plastic recycling is not nearly sufficient.
We need to enact more regulations to ensure that more products are make with recyclable materials, that the products themselves can easily be recycled, and provide incentives to actually do the recycling. We have a lot of work ahead of us, and in the current political climate, little political will to get it done. This is a big problem in the USA.
90 percent of all the plastic that reaches the world's oceans gets flushed through just 10 rivers: The Yangtze, the Indus, Yellow River, Hai River, the Nile, the Ganges, Pearl River, Amur River, the Niger, and the Mekong (in that order). [1]
[1] Christian Schmidt, Tobias Krauth and Stephan Wagner (2017), Export of plastic debris by rivers into the Sea
Ahh, the places receiving so much in US, and to a lesser extent other Western imports, their own putative systems for dealing with the waste and recycling it break down completely. Leading to entire towns built on processing the West's waste meaning it's everywhere.
"Their fault, nothing to do with us"
This is blaming the recipient of the bullet for the shooting.
Should we be more specific? Very few cities in my state have ever had recycling programs of any kind, so we can't be blamed for this harm that "coastal elites" have inflicted on China.
Actually I tend to think less specific - it's a global problem of globalisation and global supply chains. That rather makes it everyone's problem - those that created it, bought it, disposed of it and possibly recycled some of it. Recycling aimed to make the problem better and ended up so broken that it's making it worse. Pointing the finger at someone else to escape in each and every piece on the matter isn't particularly helpful.
I've slowly ended up thinking that simply dumping it in landfill is less harmful, but not as good as producing less in the first place. Which is still a point in favour of your state's reluctance to recycle.
