As plastic production has skyrocketed over the past several decades, wealthy countries have benefited enormously — from increasingly lightweight, affordable products, for example. The full social and environmental costs of this plastic boom, however, have been disproportionately offloaded onto poorer people in the developing world.
According to an analysis published last week by the nonprofit World Wide Fund for Nature, or WWF, the costs of plastic across its life cycle — from production to disposal — are at least eight times higher for low- and middle-income countries than they are for high-income countries. In places like Brazil, Ethiopia, Fiji, and India, governments’ limited capacity to control or regulate plastic production has led to growing health risks from petrochemical plants’ toxic air emissions and chemical spills. Meanwhile, a pileup of discarded plastic threatens to overwhelm these countries’ waste management infrastructure, causing widespread land and water pollution.
