Great point, though I know that many places export their plastic to China and Indonesia for 'recycling' (I know my city exports to Indonesia for example) and am not sure how they are counted in the analysis you cite. So would focusing on waste management in Asia be more effective than trying to sway US policy?

Thanks for your input Habryka. I try to be pretty deliberate about optimizing for fuzzies some of the time (which tend to be local charities), but this one is more of a 'most good per dollar' type issue. To me, the time that EA gets the most nebulous is how to define 'good'. Even if we narrowly define 'good' as human happiness, I think there are arguments to be made for environmental causes with long term effects such as animal extinction and plastic pollution.

I think you are right that there aren't any in depth analyses of pollution related causes yet, but I'm hoping that the clear eyed gaze of someone in the EA community will turn to it at some point. Until then, I'm gonna try to extrapolate lessons from other areas about whether to contribute to policy change, research, clean up, etc. Thanks again