The world has a serious trash problem.

According to the United Nations

we dump 2.12 billion tons of waste every year. Everyday more waste are
being discarded and trash accumulates but where does this trash go? Usually
if not recycled, trash are dumped in a landfill. Many countries are taking
initiative to reduce their waste problem by recycling and for a long time
people, including me, believed that this is enough.

For many years the recyclable waste of developed countries were

purchased by China and this has become a billion dollar industry. Then back
in 2018, China passed “National Sword” policy which banned the import of
most plastics and other materials headed for that nation's recycling
processors, which had handled nearly half of the world's recyclable waste for
the past quarter century. The recyclable waste was then passed to other
Southeast Asian countries. This has become a problem since Southeast Asian
countries doesn't have the resources to recycle so much waste that were
illegally dumped by developed countries. According to the UN Environment
report (2018), only 9% of all plastic waste ever produced has been recycled.
About 12% has been incinerated, while the rest — 79% — has accumulated
in landfills, dumps or the natural environment.

The world has a plastic problem and it has pressing consequences in our
health and environment.

Katz, C. (2019). Piling Up: How China’s Ban on Importing Waste Has Stalled
Global Recycling. Retrieved September 26, 2020, from
https://e360.yale.edu/features/piling-up-how-chinas-ban-on-importing-
waste-has-stalled-global-recycling#:~:text=China's%20%E2%80%9CNational
%20Sword%E2%80%9D%20policy%2C,for%20the%20past%20quarter
%20century.

Parker, L. (2019) The world's plastic pollution crisis explained. Retrieved from
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/plastic-pollution/

Our planet is drowning in plastic pollution. (n.a). Retrieved from

https://www.unenvironment.org/interactive/beat-plastic-pollution/