Much of the waste was sent to Turkey, followed by Malaysia, with Indonesia also a regular destination. Investigations have repeatedly linked the plastic recycling industry in these countries to environmental damage, illegal dumping and burning, and labour abuses.
We live in a system where costs are only realized at the manufacture of a product and not at its disposal. The inevitable outcome is cheap production wins, leading to throwaway societies, and ignoring the cost of disposal, which is also an important, even critical cost of associated with the product. Society is left to foot the bill, while the manufacturers prance away without having to cover the costs of the problems they created.
The solution is simple - if a company manufactures and sells a product, then that company should be responsible for its disposal as well. This will encourage longer lasting products and reduced environmental damage as well. Plastics are not as cheap as they seem when you factor in the full lifecycle of the costs associated with them.
It would be difficult to implement in practice, but pales in comparison to the massive damage we’re doing to the environment.