In China, plastic pollution is extremely evident, attributed largely to the fact that the country is the world's biggest producer and consumer of plastics.
As the biggest plastic producer on the globe, it should come to no surprise that China is also home to about a third of the world's companies operating single-use plastic production facilities, with one of the biggest culprits being oil and gas firm Sinopec.
In 2015, research led by Jenna Jambeck, a professor at the University of Georgia, identified China as the world's largest source of plastic waste reaching the ocean – accounting for nearly one-third of the total in 2010. Many Chinese researchers thought that figure too high but had no data to demonstrate it.
Drowning in rubbish
In addition to the vast imports of waste, China also churns out overwhelming amounts of waste itself. Driven by skyrocketing growth in consumption and rapid urbanisation over the past 30 years, China, home to one-fifth of the global population, produces the most plastic waste in the world.
The People's Republic of China (PRC) is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases; the largest source of marine debris; the worst perpetrators of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing; and the world's largest consumer of trafficked wildlife and timber products.
Over the past decade, China's once-pollution-choked skies have steadily improved, according to more than two decades of atmospheric measurements taken by NASA satellites. But researchers say that there is still a long way to go to clean China's air and protect the health of its citizens.
Single Use Plastic
According to United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 89% of macro plastic debris in the oceans is single-use plastic. Not only that, but they have also reached the world's deepest ocean trench, Mariana Trench, which is 10,898m from the water surface.
Agriculture. Agriculture uses up to 70% of the world's freshwater (20% is used by industry) and is one of its biggest polluters. The most water-intensive crops are wheat, maize, rice, cotton and sugarcane. Some types of nuts are also a problem.
Most ocean pollution begins on land.
Much of this runoff flows to the sea, carrying with it agricultural fertilizers and pesticides. Eighty percent of pollution to the marine environment comes from the land. One of the biggest sources is called nonpoint source pollution, which occurs as a result of runoff.
The South Pacific and South Atlantic Oceans are the least polluted.
The countries that pollute oceans with plastic waste are following a pattern. The top 10 ocean plastic polluting countries are mostly Asian, with the Philippines in first place and India at number two. Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam also made the list of top 10 contributors to ocean pollution by plastic waste.
China is rich in fossil fuel resources and doesn't resist exploiting them even though it also invests in green energy sources (mainly solar). As a result, large amounts o greenhouse gases with particulate matter reach the atmosphere. Another reason is China's role in global trade.
BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China will impose more curbs on agriculture and widen restrictions on industrial development in the next five years in a bid to protect scarce, already contaminated water supplies from further pollution, a government official said on Friday.
Air pollution in China
Industry, transportation, coal power plants and household solid fuel usage are major contributors to air pollution.
While there are a few places that boast extremely clean water, such as Canada, Iceland, Antarctica, or even Upstate New York, the team of scientists determined that the cleanest water in the world was in the Patagonia region of Chile, Puerto Williams.
Top 10 most polluting countries 2022
The three countries with the highest CO2 emissions are: China with 9.9 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions, largely due to the export of consumer goods and its heavy reliance on coal; The United States with 4.4 billion tonnes of CO2 emitted; India with 2.3 billion tonnes of CO2 emitted.
Even if you live inland, you can help reduce ocean plastic pollution by using less single-use plastic and properly disposing of your plastic waste. Here's what you can do: Help keep plastic out of the ocean and other waterways by participating in local trash cleanups. Reduce plastic use.
Indeed, today's seas absorb as much as a quarter of all man-made carbon emissions, which changes the pH of surface waters and leads to acidification (pH is a measure of how acidic or basic water is). This problem is rapidly worsening—oceans are now acidifying faster than they have in some 300 million years.
But specifically, scientists say, the bulk of the garbage patch trash comes from China and other Asian countries. This shouldn't be a surprise: Overall, worldwide, most of the plastic trash in the ocean comes from Asia.
Of the world's most polluted 30 cities, 22 are in India, according to research by IQ AirVisual, a Swiss-based group that gathers air-quality data globally, and Greenpeace. The remaining eight cities are all in Pakistan, Bangladesh and China - but the list doesn't include Beijing, which comes in at number 122.
By the end of the twentieth century, the explosion in economic growth also made China the world's second largest energy consumer after the United States. Energy consumption, especially coal consumption, is the main source of anthropogenic air pollution emissions in Chinese cities.