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It's a misleading headline, since it's really saying that the US exports plastic and the places where it's exported manage to get it into the ocean.

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Yes, apparently some US plastic recycling programs amounted to fraud in that they would simply export waste without due diligence about the overseas sites they were shipping them to. There's a reason why "reduce" and "reuse" come first in the old adage before "recycle".

Fraud is a strong word. This was common knowledge to anyone interested in how recycling works. Wait until you hear about the mountains of glass sitting around never to be recycled.

If by "mountains of glass" you mean "landfilled", then yup.

It's not well-understood that municipal recycling requires private contractors to bid on the waste stream, and if they can't make money on it, it all gets landfilled like the good old days. At least consumers are now trained to separate it.

Those can grifters are likely the real recycling heros of our time. Make it easy for them to find them.

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