美國製造最多塑料垃圾

Biggest plastic waste producer
美國製造最多塑料垃圾

When the US Environmental Protection Agency released its plan recently for addressing marine litter, it named five Asian nations as responsible for more than half of the plastic waste flowing into the oceans every year.
美國環境保護署近日發佈了一項解決海洋垃圾問題的計劃，點名指出五個亞洲國家要爲每年流入海洋的塑料垃圾負主要責任。

But the US is by far the world's largest generator of plastic waste.
但目前美國纔是世界上最大的塑料垃圾製造者。

Now, new research, published in Science Advances, reexamines the US's role as a plastic consumer and concludes that the country has much more work to do at home to manage its waste.
發表在《科學進展》上的一項新研究重新審視了美國作爲塑料消費國的角色，並得出結論稱，美國在處理國內垃圾方面還有很多工作要做。

It produced about 42 million metric tons of the stuff in 2016. Although the US accounted for just 4% of the global population in 2016, it generated 17% of all plastic waste.
美國2016年製造了大約4200萬噸塑料垃圾，雖然當年美國人口僅佔世界總人口的4%，卻製造了世界上17%的塑料垃圾。

Meanwhile, less than 10% of American plastic waste is recycled, and the US has a 30-year history of shipping half of its recyclable plastic overseas, primarily to developing nations lacking the infrastructure to manage it.
與此同時，美國只有不到10%的塑料垃圾被回收利用，而美國將其一半的可回收塑料運往海外已有30年曆史，主要是運往缺乏處理設施的發展中國家。