There’s a perception among the Australian public that much of the rubbish on our beaches and comes from Asia, where poor waste infrastructure has led to a deluge of plastic invading our shorelines. It might surprise you to hear, that for many in Asia, there is a perception that the rubbish on their beaches comes from Australia and other western nations. We pay to dump our garbage on their doorsteps, leading to a perceived deluge of Australian plastic invading Asia’s shorelines.
The world’s plastic waste has become a political football, knowing no boundaries if it reaches the sea, becoming marine litter. But while fingers are pointed at one another, important empirical data is missing from this debate. Leading modelling studies on plastic lost to the ocean globally suggest >80% is coming from countries in Asia, but is this true? I have been fortunate to be part of the CSIRO Marine Debris Team’s Global Plastic Losses Project, where the team, along with our international partners, have tallied litter inland, along rivers, on beaches and the nearshore sea in Australia and most of Asia’s coastal countries. What we have found re-writes many of these pervasive assumptions about responsibility for marine litter.