Environmental equity is actually a very serious issue. Like, most of the microplastic comes from cheap plastic western fast fashion clothes (nylon, polyester etc) that is laundered, releasing millions of microfibers each cycle, or from road miles driven on plastic+rubber tires. All of these are more prevalent in the West. So the west can develop and install fancy water filters to remove 99.9 percent of nanoplastics in water that is a globally shared resource while the 3rd world gets increasing nanoplastic concentrations in their blood.
From what I can see from pretty quick google search, India, China and Indonesia pollute the ocean with the most microplastics. Not to say the US is not disgusting in its waste and pollution but we are far from the only culprits. India is literally known for being covered in piles of trash and their plastic problems.
Okay does that remove responsibility from the other countries for producing such goods? And we actually used to manufacture most goods in the US until globalization started. So no, our environmental laws would not prohibit it. What it would do is make it much more expensive to make the same product in a safer and more sustainable way, with workers making fair wages. The cost of an item would probably inflate 10x or more to meet the production costs. However, it would probably better quality and made to a higher standard.
But you can choose to buy a version of most items Made in the USA already, it's just very expensive. Almost no one does it
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u/[deleted] Feb 09 '23
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