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Now,/you may wonder/if there is any effective way/to reduce plastic pollution. One way is/to improve waste management. People in Europe,/the United States,/Japan,/and South Korea/are among the heaviest users of plastic. They consume/about one-third of the global total. However,/these countries are responsible/for only around one percent/of what flows into the ocean. This is partly due to their systems/for waste collection and disposal.
Waste management,/however,/is not so effective/in many other countries in Asia,/as well as in West Africa and Latin America. They are the plastic pollution hot spots/of the world.
Ideally,/every city in the world/should have good garbage collection and disposal systems. But waste management is costly. Improving systems could take many years. In the meantime,/thousands of tons of plastic/continue to flow into the ocean every day/through rivers.
We looked at/more than 100,000 of the world’s rivers. We found/that nearly 80 percent of all plastic flowing into the ocean/comes from just 1,000 of those rivers:/just one percent.
This fact pointed us/toward a better way/to clean the oceans. While we wait for the world/to build better waste management systems,/we can focus on rivers. We can turn off the tap.
Now,/you may wonder/if there is any effective way/to reduce plastic pollution. One way is/to improve waste management. People in Europe,/the United States,/Japan,/and South Korea/are among the heaviest users of plastic. They consume/about one-third of the global total. However,/these countries are responsible/for only around one percent/of what flows into the ocean. This is partly due to their systems/for waste collection and disposal.
Waste management,/however,/is not so effective/in many other countries in Asia,/as well as in West Africa and Latin America. They are the plastic pollution hot spots/of the world.
Ideally,/every city in the world/should have good garbage collection and disposal systems. But waste management is costly. Improving systems could take many years. In the meantime,/thousands of tons of plastic/continue to flow into the ocean every day/through rivers.
We looked at/more than 100,000 of the world’s rivers. We found/that nearly 80 percent of all plastic flowing into the ocean/comes from just 1,000 of those rivers:/just one percent.
This fact pointed us/toward a better way/to clean the oceans. While we wait for the world/to build better waste management systems,/we can focus on rivers. We can turn off the tap.