For this International Recycling Day, Focus is going to Thailand, one of the biggest polluters in the world: two million tonnes of plastic waste are produced there each year, and only a quarter of this mountain of waste is recycled.
Some 50,000 tonnes end up in the ocean each year.
The cause is an underdeveloped recycling industry – a large part of sorting is still done by hand in small workshops.
Above all, the country imports foreign waste: 372,000 tonnes in 2023. Overwhelmed by plastic, the Thai government has decided to ban these imports from 2025, because the country no longer wants to be the world's trash can.
A report by William de Tamaris, Aruna Popuri and Matt Hunt.