Plastics

Learn the facts about plastic. While public knowledge and backlash against plastics have grown substantially in recent years, disinformation about how to solve the plastic crisis has long been and continues to be widespread. These are the key facts to know:

• Plastic is made from fossil fuels and toxic chemicals. Ninety-eight percent of all plastics are made by heating fossil fuels like crude oil and natural gas (watch the process here). Making and incinerating plastic emitted over 2 billion tons of greenhouse gas in 2020 alone. That number is set to more than triple by 2050.
• Plastic pollutes throughout its five-hundred-plus-year lifespan. Scientists aren’t sure how long plastic lasts, but estimates are up to five hundred years. Air and water pollution starts in disproportionately lower-income and nonwhite communities surrounding petrochemical plants, leading to myriad health problems. Physical pollution builds up virtually everywhere, from urban centers to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. As plastic breaks into microplastics and nanoplastics, it leaches toxic chemicals into soil, water, and food supplies, harming wilfelife and human health.
• The scale of plastic pollution is massive. Virgin plastic producers and the banks that fund them are the root cause of plastic pollution. Their industry (and demand for their product) has expanded plastic production from 1.5 million metric tons in 1950 to nearly 367 million metric tons as of 2020. Half of the plastic ever produced was made in the last fifteen years, and 60 percent of it has been dumped into the environment—in large part because it was designed to be used only once. Today, a garbage-truck load of plastic enters the ocean every minute.
• Most plastic can’t be (and isn’t) recycled. Many plastics can’t be recycled, while those that can are only recyclable about two or three times before they’re no longer usable. Recycling systems worldwide are inequitable, ineffective, and insufficient. As a result, only 9 percent of all the plastic ever produced has actually been recycled. See Governance to learn how world leaders can improve waste management, including making polluters pay to clean up their waste.
• Plastic that can’t be recycled could be repurposed. The most sensible thing to do with billions of tons of plastic waste is to solidify it and keep it in place. Nairobi entrepreneur Nzambi Matee does this by recycling plastic waste into bricks that are more durable than concrete and weigh half as much. In this way, incipient microplastic becomes macroplastic. Such repurposing projects should use coatings that prevent UV degradation and breakdown.
• Higher-income countries create the most plastic waste, while lower-income countries pay the price. Just twenty companies are responsible for more than half of all single-use plastic waste, and higher-income countries like the United States and the UK consume it most. They then ship their plastic trash to lower-income countries, where a lack of waste-management resources means much of the plastic must be dumped or burned, releasing toxic chemicals that cause disease and death.

Take political and legal action to stop plastic production. The plastics industry has paid for ad campaigns to convince the public that individual recycling is the key to solving plastic pollution, but pushing for policies that reduce plastic production itself is much more effective. Here’s how communities around the world are doing it, and how you can join in:

• Local residents in Louisiana filed a lawsuit against Formosa Plastics to halt the construction of a plastic refinery in their neighborhood—a win that averted emissions from an estimated 13 million tons of greenhouse gases and 15,400 pounds of the cancer-causing chemical ethylene oxide per year.
• After recognizing that goats provided to local farmers through her NGO were dying from eating plastic bags, this Malawi woman led a group of environmental activists to compel the Malawi High Court to ban single-use thin plastics.
• In 2019, Maine voters elected Janet Mills, their first woman governor, who ran on a platform of strong environmental protections. In 2021, Governor Mills passed the U.S.’s first state-level extended producer responsibility (EPR) law for consumer packaging, a key policy approach that requires companies to pay for the collection, sorting, and recycling of their plastic products.
• These policy resources for activists include sample legislation and comprehensive tool kits for mobilizing your community and leaders around key areas like microplastics, plastic bags, straws, foodware, and bioplastics.
• This guide provides simple organizing tools and example campaigns, including letter-to-the-editor templates and a social media tool kit.

Use your influence to reduce plastic waste where you live, study, work, and shop. Reducing your own plastic consumption is a positive step, but working together with your friends, family, and network can multiply the impact. Here are a few ways to do it:

• Ask your local grocer to offer a bulk-goods section where shoppers can use their own containers and eliminate single-use plastics offered in-store.
• Ask your favorite eatery to become an Ocean Friendly Restaurant which commits establishments to reducing as much plastic use and waste as possible.
• Students can join the Green Schools Alliance to learn how to organize at their school to eliminate plastic waste from cafeterias, classrooms, and campuses.
• Ask local music venues to eliminate plastic waste, as Pickathon—a music festival held on an Oregon farm—has done by replacing single-use cups, plates, and cutlery with reusables that can be washed onsite.
• Start a chapter of Boomerang Bags with neighbors, friends, and family to upcycle fabrics into reusable bags and distribute them in your community.
• Team up with coworkers to try these nine steps toward reducing plastic waste in your workplace, including offering reusable water bottle refill stations in-office.
• Challenge friends, family, and coworkers to join you in participating in #PlasticFreeJuly, then help each other carry new habits into the rest of the year.
• Join or organize a plastic cleanup—whether you go plogging, participate in a beach cleanup, or pick up underwater plastic with dive buddies. Document pollution as you go, as the Dutch Litterati did to pressure McDonald’s to reduce their waste.
• Learn how to spot greenwashing in advertising (especially from brands and companies you buy from) and call it out when you see it. A few common giveaways to look out for are vague, overly broad language, and a lack of proof of sustainability claims.

Take responsibility for your own plastic consumption and waste. If you have the privilege to choose, don’t buy items packaged in or made with plastics—especially single-use plastics. This guide has resources to help you get started, including a list of reusable replacements for single-use plastic items such as grocery bags, cutlery, and water bottles. Note that reusable items must be reused a certain number of times to be more sustainable—131 times for cotton tote bags and 10-20 times for reusable water bottles. And recycle whatever you can; check How2Recycle or ask your local officials to find out what is actually recyclable.

End no-strings-attached financing for the plastics industry. Between 2015 and 2019, banks gave top plastic polluters over $1.7 trillion in loans and underwriting—equivalent to Russia’s entire GDP. None of these banks have developed due diligence systems, contingent loan criteria, or financing exclusions. Banks and investors should track and disclose the plastic waste their money is funding, make financing for plastic polluters contingent upon their implementation of best practices, and ultimately divest from virgin plastic producers.

Incentivize plastic recycling and reduction in public spaces. Deposit return systems (DRS) are a proven and effective way to increase plastic recycling and reduce litter. Cities and states can lead the way by implementing DRS policies and other incentives locally to make it easy for citizens to manage and prevent plastic waste.

• Germany’s Pfand bottle deposit system, which requires shoppers to pay a deposit when purchasing a bottle or can that is refunded once they return the empty container to the store, has driven the national return rate over 98 percent.
• Bee’ah Rewards in Abu Dhabi enters citizens to win prizes like GoPro cameras and smart TVs each time they deposit recyclables in a reverse vending machine.
• This global map of reverse vending machines tracks programs from Mumbai to Edinburgh.
• Eau de Paris offers over a thousand free water-dispensing stations throughout the city, with vending machines selling reusable bottles in high-traffic locations. Paris achieved this by taking back their water rights from private companies, in league with hundreds of other cities, turning the tide on water privatization.
• This program in Southern California has installed nearly 120 water-bottle fill stations at schools and popular community facilities.

Become a Zero Waste City. Zero Waste Cities create and implement systems that move from managing waste to phasing it out completely. Check out this Zero Waste Masterplan and follow the lead of these standout cities on their way to zero:

• When the small Japanese village of Kamikatsu was forced to shut down its outdated incinerators in 2000, their only option was to create less trash. Residents began separating their waste into forty-five different categories and dropping off reusable but unwanted items at a “recycling store,” where others could pick up items for free. Today Kamikatsu recycles 81 percent of its waste, compared to Japan’s national rate of around 20 percent.
• The Italian town of Capannori has implemented a “pay-as-you-throw” waste tariff, tax incentives for retailers to reduce packaging, and a municipal reuse center. Read their zero-waste case study here.
• The city of Alaminos is leading zero-waste efforts in the Philippines with a waste-management structure that engages all levels of society, from city government to barangay (the native Tagalog term for a village) leadership to individual citizens.

Protect against microplastics. This report from Environment & Human Health, Inc. provides key recommendations for cities to address microplastic contamination.

• Test municipal drinking water for microplastics and retrofit treatment as needed.
• Conduct street sweeping twice a month to remove tire wear particles—estimated to be one of the largest sources of microplastics entering waterways.
• Evaluate microplastics in treated sewage and upgrade treatment to reduce them.

Explore ways to prevent, clean up, and reuse plastic waste. Breaking the Plastic Wave, a global analysis using first-of-its-kind modeling, showed it is possible to cut annual flows of plastic into the ocean by about 80 percent in the next twenty years by applying existing solutions and technologies. New innovations are needed to close the gap on the remaining 20 percent.

• Eastman Kodak has a Tennessee plant that can break plastic down to the molecular level, enabling it to be reformulated into new products—and essentially recycled forever.
• This first-of-its-kind study in Sweden discovered that microbes in oceans and soil are evolving to eat plastic, which could help break down plastics into their building blocks so that virgin plastic production is no longer needed.
• Researchers in Indonesia have developed a “sonic cleanup” method that uses sound waves to concentrate and collect microplastics in seawater without the use of expensive filters.
• Mori Food Technology uses naturally derived silk protein to create a protective layer that preserves fresh foods, preventing the need for plastic packaging.
• Sway uses regenerative design to make seaweed-based packaging that can be composted in your backyard.
• Seaweed-based straws from Loliware break down within hours.
• Sustainable packaging start-up Notpla uses seaweed and plants to make biodegradable versions of common takeout containers like boxes and sachets.

Use your art to inspire action. Art can break through the noise to illuminate the plastic problem and mobilize people around solutions.

• Canadian sculpture artist Benjamin Von Wong built a giant faucet pouring out a stream of plastic waste three stories high. His message: #TurnOffThePlasticTap. The project website acts as a hub for visitors to take action.
• Mexico City artist Alejandro Durán creates colorful mosaics out of plastic trash that’s washed up on the coast of Sian Ka’anone, one of Mexico's largest federally protected nature reserves. Over the course of the project, Durán has identified plastic waste from fifty-eight nations and territories on six continents.
• U.S. artist Tess Felix’s Ocean Hero series uses plastic debris to create classical portraits of activists and leaders working to clean up the ocean, from oceanographer Sylvia Earle to Pope Francis.

Identify, disclose, and track your plastic footprint. Companies can start shrinking their plastic footprint by first finding out what it looks like and where it’s coming from—whether it’s across a supply chain or within an office. Create transparency by communicating findings to the public, setting realistic, measurable targets, and remaining accountable through regular reporting.

• Ampliphi is a plastic management and accounting platform that supports tracking, reduction, and reporting.
• Plastic Disclosure Project works with manufacturers, services, and municipalities to measure and understand their plastic footprint.
• The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Circulytics goes beyond tracking plastic waste to measure a company’s progress toward designing waste out of their business model—moving toward what’s commonly called a circular or closed-loop production model.
• This piece breaks down the benefits of plastic footprint tracking and reduction, from increasing market share to opening doors to better funding opportunities.
• In 2019, Coca-Cola revealed for the first time that it produces 3 million tons of plastic packaging a year—equivalent to 200,000 bottles a minute. They are one of thirty-one companies, including Mars, Nestlé, and Danone, that disclosed their plastic footprint through the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s drive for transparency.
• Amazon has declined to reveal its plastic footprint despite calls to do so from shareholders and became a cautionary tale at the end of 2021 when Oceana did it for them. Their report estimated that packaging from Amazon deliveries alone created 599 million pounds of plastic packaging waste in 2020, rising by 29 percent as online ordering skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Design plastic out of products and processes. Whether redesigning existing products or creating something new, companies should focus on eliminating virgin plastic and using alternative materials or recycled plastic when plastic-like functionality is needed. These products replace plastic items without using any plastics at all:

• Swedish supermarkets are replacing plastic produce stickers with laser labeling that uses bright light to etch PLU numbers directly onto fruits and vegetables, saving 200 kilometers (135 miles) of plastic 30 centimeters wide and generating less than 1 percent of the carbon emissions needed to produce a sticker of similar size.
• Planera created the world’s only certified flushable menstrual pad, replacing plastic pads that take approximately five hundred years to degrade with plant-based ones that break down in about thirty days.
• These reusable sterilization pouches for medical instruments are one answer to reducing plastic waste in industries that rely on plastics for safety.

Help customers embrace a new normal without plastics. Companies can take simple steps to make adopting new habits easy, frictionless, and even fun for customers.

• Japan increased the refusal rate of plastic bags to 40 percent after six months of cashiers simply asking people whether they wanted a bag.
• barePack in Singapore allows users to order meals online that are delivered in waste-free reusable packaging.
• Algramo in Chile has created a vending-machine system that dispenses liquid detergent and other cleaning solutions directly into reusable containers.

Don’t wait for a binding global treaty to take action. In March 2022, world leaders at the UN Environment Assembly agreed to draw up a historic treaty on plastic waste by 2024. Such unified regulations are in companies’ best interest: for example, because Nestlé sells products in 187 countries, they must also comply with 187 different sets of national regulations on plastic packaging. Businesses can reach out to work with the UNEP to shift away from single-use plastics across their supply chain.

The Story of Plastic Documentary Film by The Story of Stuff Project (83 mins.)

Why 99 percent of Ocean Plastic Pollution Is "Missing" by Vox (9 mins.)

"How Bad Are Plastics, Really?" by Rebecca Altman / The Atlantic

Source of Plastic Waste by the Plastic Waste Makers Index

In Images: Plastic is Forever by the United Nations

Pollution Is Colonialism by Max Liboiron / Duke University Press

Recycling! Is it BS? by How to Save a Planet Podcast (48 mins.)