“Search “Zone Rouge”. These are areas so polluted during WWI that are still No-go today. “
While you are right about the no-go zones I don’t think seeding an area with mines and artillery shells is the kind of “pollution” that a shipping container of plastic phones, or burning oil tankers or cities brings to mind. Active munitions are intended to kill. Oil and plastic is not. People still die every year from ordinance expended in the Franko-Prussian war. People occasionally die in the US from munitions dating to the American Civil War. A device intended to kill is not “pollution;” at least not the kind of pollution we normally think of in that word’s context.
While the ordinance is the big problem for humans, the lead, arsenic, mercury and other chemicals is the problem for everything else. There are places where plants cannot grow.
I agree that a container of Garfields is just an annoyance. Asia and Africa need to tackle their problem with pollution and stop dumping it into the ocean.