Short answers, pulled from the story.
Estimates for the United States reach as high as 7.6 billion tons of industrial waste produced annually, as of 2017. Accurate figures are difficult to establish because industrial waste is often mixed into municipal waste streams.
Industrial waste includes dirt and gravel, masonry and concrete, scrap metal, oil, solvents, chemicals, scrap lumber, and vegetable matter from restaurants. It can be solid, semi-solid, or liquid in form, and may be hazardous or non-hazardous.
The 1972 Clean Water Act was the first US law to prohibit uncontrolled discharges of industrial waste and municipal sewage into American waterways. Before that statute, open dumping and releasing wastewater directly into nearby water bodies were common practice.
The 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, known as RCRA, provides federal regulation of industrial, household, and manufacturing solid and hazardous wastes in the United States. It began as an amendment to the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965, and was strengthened in 1984 by the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments, which introduced land disposal restrictions and waste minimization requirements.
According to the WWF, approximately 65.85 percent of marine mammal species are known to have eaten or been entangled in plastic, and all seven sea turtle species are affected. Industrial waste is identified as a major cause of this problem.
High-income countries recover more than one-third of their waste through recycling and composting, while low-income countries recycle only about 4 percent. In lower-income regions, over 90 percent of waste is often channeled into unregulated dumps or openly burned.