Whenever we post videos of our work in trash-filled rivers in Asia and Latin America, I sometimes see people make unkind or even racist comments about the people who live there. Things like calling them “pigs” or remarks about “brown people” that I won’t repeat here. When I read comments like that, I often think of this photo. This is what the canals looked like in my own country, the Netherlands, back in the 1960s, when we weren’t as wealthy, lacked proper waste management, and had other priorities than the environment. I don’t think the situation is very different from what we see in many middle-income countries today. That should actually be a source of optimism: just as the Netherlands became clean over time, today’s top-polluting countries can too. The difference, however, is that today’s trash is mostly plastic, which is far more harmful than the household waste of the 1960s. That’s why we can’t just sit back and wait for development to take its course. We need to stop this flow of trash into the oceans now, and that’s what The Ocean Cleanup’s Interceptors are for. So while it’s both rude and historically ignorant to say that pollution is caused by the nationality or ethnicity of people in today’s top-polluting countries, I *also* disagree with those who claim it’s somehow “racist” to acknowledge the fact that most plastic flowing into the ocean does originate from these places. After I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times explaining that deploying Interceptors in coastal cities in middle-income countries is the fastest and cheapest way to get back to clean oceans, an activist organization put out a statement saying this was a “harmful and biased narrative.” They continued: “to say that the Global South is somehow to blame for the pollution that they are forced to endure is frankly immoral and unjust. To add insult to injury, this article was published on Africa Day, 25 May, completely ignoring the historical implications and unjust power dynamics between Global North countries and countries in Africa.” What this organization, in my view, failed to recognize is the difference between stating facts and assigning blame. I don’t care who is at fault or where those people were born. I’m not in the business of blame. I’m in the business of solving a problem. And that means putting Interceptors where they can have the greatest impact. Both of these positions reflect “us vs them” thinking—one portrays the “South” as the baddies, while the other portrays the “North” that way. I believe both would benefit from seeing the issue as “humanity vs plastic pollution” instead.