While the developed world obsesses over banning plastic bags and demonizing straws as if civilization’s salvation hinges on paper sipping tubes, reality quietly laughs from the shoreline. The overwhelming majority of plastic waste choking the oceans doesn’t come from tidy Western supermarkets; it pours out of rivers in Asia and Africa. And when I say the majority, I don’t mean a polite 70 or 80 percent. I mean well north of 90 percent—an avalanche of waste that renders the contributions of developed nations statistically microscopic. Western plastic “guilt” barely even registers on the planetary scale, but sure, let’s keep pretending your reusable hemp tote bag is the frontline of environmental salvation.
So how do we actually deal with this instead of staging moral theater? There’s a brutally simple solution. Measure how much plastic each river system dumps into the sea, pin a hard number on every single rivermouth, and apply a penalty tariff accordingly. If a country allows its waterways to vomit plastic into international waters, it pays. If it doesn’t like paying, it can clean up its own mess by whatever means it deems fit, prove it, and escape the tariff. Meanwhile, the funds collected go toward cleaning the oceans that everyone claims to care about. Either they sort out their domestic environmental failures, or they compensate the rest of the world for the damage through a less competitive market position. That’s called consequence.The only problem? The same problem as always. Hand politicians a new revenue stream, and watch them turn it into a permanent feeding trough. Give them a “temporary environmental tariff,” and suddenly it applies to everyone, forever, because governments never met a tax they didn’t want to marry and raise grandchildren with. The idea is sound. The execution—like most things in politics—would probably rot the moment it touches government hands.