No one ships plastic waste unless you mean E-waste... The OP was about the fact that no western country just throws household plastic waste into the water, it goes to landfills or is very often incinerated, plastic is a pretty good carbon source for combustion you know...
Ok, we apparently still ship plastic waste to India and Malaysia. Though about 85% is incinerated, at least here in Denmark. Crazy really. Most plastics can't be easily recycled, it actually makes sense just to burn it really.
Yup, people in UK carefully wash plastics, use separate bins, special collection trucks .. then the waste is shipped for sorting and recycling, only it's much more profitable to dump the plastics and take the extra money paid to "recycle" it. Richer nations have companies who know what's happening, but the people think "we're recycling, saving the planet", and the companies get more money, and the poor people make much more money than they would have. Everyone wins!
I assume this is still happening but there have been several exposés, leading some people to no longer bother recycling. As a reaction to that some city/area councils will fine you for not separating recyclables; our city vastly reduced the size of our bins (trash cans).
Most of our family waste seems to be unrecyclable plastic packaging.
That washing part always gets me. Its consuming more resources, perhaps more than the bottle or can is worth. My mother in law used to put empty bottle and cans (trash!) into my dishwasher and run it with soap. My god, the waste, the damage to the environment.
It reminds me of eco-tourism. Its fun/satisfying to be part of 'recycling', so folks make up steps they can do to participate more, and end up torpedoing the whole point of it.
Most of our plastic "recycling" is shipped. Thousands and thousands of container loads full of milk cartons, bottles etc compressed into bales.
The US exports by far the most. Much is poorly washed or sorted, regardless of which nation sent it, often so it's not suitable for recycling - plastic recycling is very easy to contaminate.
When countries push back and restrict imports they find they have an illegal industry that starts mislabelling containers, and illegal factories spring up.
So you are telling me someone offers recycle services and they just dumb it in 3rd world rivers? How is that not "their fault" ?
Australia ships toxic waste to Denmark, is that problematic in it self? No! Because a danish company offers services for safe disposal. If that company just dumbed the barrels of toxins in the ocean, would Australia be responsible?
We used to ship a lot of plastic waste back to China in what would be otherwise empty shipping containers. The movie "Plastic China" shows what the other end of that looks like:
