IN September 2015, Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., United States, released a groundbreaking report claiming that the Philippines, China, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam are the top five plastic polluters in the world. The report stated that “over half of land-based plastic-waste leakage” could be attributed to these five countries. Since then, the Philippines, which ranked third in that report, has been the subject of blame and ridicule.
Now, seven years after the report entitled “Stemming the Tide: Land-based strategies for a plastic-free ocean”, Ocean Conservancy issued an apology and took down the controversial report in their website.
First, they apologized for recommending incineration as a solution to the plastic problem. They said: “In September 2015, Ocean Conservancy released Stemming the Tide, a report developed with outside consultants, that built upon the estimates published in Science. In Stemming the Tide, Ocean Conservancy focused solely on minimizing the amount of plastics entering the ocean. We investigated and included incineration and waste-to-energy as acceptable solutions to the ocean plastic crisis, which was wrong. We failed to confront the root causes of plastic waste or incorporate the effects on the communities and NGOs working on the ground in the places most impacted by plastic pollution. We did not consider how these technologies support continued demand for plastic production and hamper the move to a circular economy and a zero-carbon future.”
Second, they apologized for the framing of their story which put the blame on plastic pollution solely to the East and Southeast Asian region, without acknowledging the role of developed countries. They said: “Further, by focusing so narrowly on one region of the world (East and Southeast Asia), we created a narrative about who is responsible for the ocean plastic pollution crisis – one that failed to acknowledge the outsized role that developed countries, especially the United States, have played and continue to play in generating and exporting plastic waste to this very region. This too was wrong.”
They did not remove the Philippines and other Asian countries from the list of top plastic polluters but merely acknowledged that they are not solely to be blamed. Developed countries, especially their big corporations, share the responsibility for being the source of plastics. Multi-nationals who exports or manufacture their products in the Asian region should be responsible for plastic pollution as well.
There’s another article published online at ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics entitled “Where does the plastics in our ocean come from?” written by Hannah Ritchie which claims that The Philippines is the biggest source of Ocean plastics. According to the article, an estimated 81 percent of ocean plastics come from Asian rivers with the Philippines contributing more than one-third (36 percent) of the global total. Should the author of this article re-consider the framing of his story too and cite the role of developed countries? In the spirit of fairness, I think so.