alt Hacker NewsI guess that mostly proves my point in the sense that it's not most people's personal choices that determine if plastic ends up in the ocean- it's either incompetence or downright deliberately deceptive actions by someone else- it's crazy to think that we need to make chairs out of bottles because someone decided to ship the plastic to another country rather than actually deal with it properly.
In that sense, saying "recycle or it'll end up in the ocean" is like saying "eat your food because people are starving in africa". Not only are the cause and effect not related but then people ignore the true underlying causes.
==it's not most people's personal choices that determine if plastic ends up in the ocean- it's either incompetence or downright deliberately deceptive actions by someone else-==
It is your personal choice to consume goods packaged in plastic. If you, as a consumer, continue to eat pre-packaged peaches and apple slices rather than just eating apples and peaches, you are consciously adding to the known problem. Blaming "someone else" doesn't change the decision that you, as an autonomous individual, have made.
Your stance uses the same logic that people use to excuse their impact on climate change. People who are generating trash (specifically plastic trash) are at fault for worsening the problem of excessive plastic trash, full stop. The same way that burning coal worsens the climate problem. The justification that the problem is so big that individuals can't (or shouldn't) change their behaviors is a coping mechanism. It's borderline nihilistic.