The United States produces more plastic waste than any other country in the world,

hundreds of tons per person.

About 90% of it ends up in landfills, is burned or shipped overseas.

Last year, more than 35,000 tons of it was shipped to Malaysia.

Malaysia received more discarded plastic from rich nations than any other developing country.

But last month, Malaysian leaders effectively banned future shipments.

Anya Brandon is director of plastics policy for the Ocean Conservancy.

Anya, why are these rich nations like the United States shipping plastic waste to countries like Malaysia?

Yeah, it's a great question.

Honestly, there's two big factors.

One, we are simply making too much waste here at home to handle ourselves.

You already said we are the number one generator of plastic waste worldwide.

The average American generates something like 200 pounds of plastic waste worldwide. The average American generates something like 200 pounds of

plastic waste each and every year. And the second big reason is it is just cheaper to send it overseas

than try to deal with it here ourselves. This sort of has led to our out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach, which is becoming painfully clear now that these other countries are no longer accepting our waste.

And what were these countries or what are these countries doing with all of this?

Well, they try to recover and recycle what they can, but we know the sheer volume of what we are sending there and what other

countries are sending there can make that all but impossible, which means that a lot of this

waste ends up landfill, illegally dumped, burned, or unfortunately ending up getting out into the

environment and ultimately into our ocean.

And is that essentially why Malaysia is saying no more?

Exactly.

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