At 4:00 am my alarm goes off. I’m on the remote coastline of Washington in Olympic National Park. Slow to rise, I fumble for my headlamp in the dark. The sun won’t be up for another hour or so and we have a few miles of hiking before our destination. I hear the grumblings of my coworkers as they leave the warmth of their tent into the crisp morning air, the sound of waves breaking nearby. Walking along the beach – part of the longest wilderness coastline in the lower 48 states – we pass the who’s who of ocean plastics washed up on the shore: Japanese shampoo bottles and styrofoam floats, old fishing nets and plastic crates that broke. Many of these items have traveled from the other side of the world to finally find respite along Washington’s coast. While my work involved monitoring rocky intertidal organisms, I couldn’t help but notice the amount of trash, specifically plastic waste, that littered these beaches. This got me thinking – where is my plastic waste going? Has it washed up on beaches on the other side of the world too? While we are past the point of cleaning every piece of plastic from the earth, what actions can we take to lessen our impact and plastic footprint?

How prevalent is plastic?

This is likely not the first time you have heard about plastic pollution. Photos of turtles with straws in their noses have become the harbinger of a plastic-clogged ocean in the same way that polar bears on melting ice are for climate change. According to researchers Geyer et al., “As of 2015, approximately 6300 million metric tons (13.8 trillion pounds) of plastic waste had been generated, around 9% of which had been recycled, 12% was incinerated, and 79% was accumulated in landfills or the natural environment.” A lot of these plastics ultimately find their way to the oceans  – roughly eight million metric tons every year, or the equivalent of a dump truck of plastic every minute. By 2050 plastic pollution in the ocean will outweigh all of the fish combined.

“By 2050 plastic pollution in the ocean will outweigh all of the fish combined.”

From zooplankton to marine mammals, ingestion of plastic debris is documented across food webs. Over one billion pounds of plastic fishing nets and gear are abandoned every year, causing entanglement and death of marine animals. As larger plastics break down from physical or chemical degradation, they create microplastics. Smaller than five millimeters in length, microplastics also come from the fibers in our clothes, and microbeads. While the US banned microbeads in cosmetics, they are still common throughout the world. Far from being restricted to the ocean, microplastics turn up nearly everywhere. Based on personal correspondence, the National Park Service’s preliminary investigation on plastic particle prevalence found microplastic densities in remote glaciers in North Cascades National Park similar to that in urban streams. Plastics are becoming so common in soil and marine sediment, researchers Zalasiewicz et al. proposed to use plastic as a “geological indicator of the Anthropocene.”

Looking at the plastic debris along Olympic National Park’s beaches, I wondered, is this how we want to be remembered by future generations – a layer of plastic in sediment for future archeologists to date us to? What is the ethos of a nation that kicks the proverbial plastic bottle down the road for our kids to deal with?

“What is the ethos of a nation that kicks the proverbial plastic bottle down the road for our kids to deal with?”

How is plastic affecting us?

Before diving into solutions, it is important to understand how plastics became so ubiquitous with modern life. Plastics provide enormous societal benefits: they are in food and beverage packaging, medical equipment, cars, and in the phone or computer you are reading this article on. Plastics have created useful, cheap single-use containers that have become part of markets around the world. But the same things that make plastics so useful – their versatility and durability, are the same reasons why they are accumulating around the world. As it turns out, microplastics are everywhere – in the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink. Unfortunately, due to the variability of chemical and particle composition and the recent nature of many plastic studies, the effects of plastics on human health are still relatively unknown. That being said, studies have found that plastics absorb pollutants in the environment, and when ingested by humans can release those toxins into the human body.

Whose plastic pollution?

One of the main sources of plastic pollution is due to over half the global population only having access to unregulated or illegal dumpsites – which contain more than 40% of the waste worldwide. According to a 2015 study, the top six countries responsible for mismanaged plastic waste by mass are in Southeast Asia. However, this statistic leaves out crucial information, that much of this waste is imported from elsewhere, most notably the US, Japan, and the EU, sometimes illegally. Some of the same authors came out with a more recent study that shows the US generates the highest total plastic waste globally, both measured by total mass and per capita. Approximately 50% of plastic waste collected globally for recycling is shipped internationally to be disposed of, oftentimes to developing nations.

By reducing our plastic use, some of the people who will benefit most directly are the roughly 11 million people in developing countries who sort through plastic waste to be recycled. The burden of sorting through plastic pollution often falls onto women, all while exposing themselves to hazardous conditions and toxic chemicals. Refusing to let their communities be overrun by the waste from other countries, community organizers like ‘The Fighting Women’ in Ivory Coast are collecting plastics and converting them to bricks to build schools. Some countries, like China, banned nearly all plastic imports, while many other countries are cracking down on the plastic waste they buy. Still, some towns in developing countries inundated with thousands of tons of plastic have few options but to burn the plastic in illegal plastic recycling plants, or risk these plastics escaping to the ocean. The US’ insatiable consumption of plastic has led to the reckless management of our own waste as we displace this burden onto countries with fewer resources, putting their population at risk of pollutants and environmental degradation.

How to tackle the problem.

At an individual level, what can each of us do to address plastic pollution? The single best thing we can do is to reduce or eliminate the amount of single-use plastic used, avoiding the problem altogether. Beyond reducing your individual plastic use, there are a number of ways you can get involved: volunteer for a local beach cleanup, participate in Plastic Free Fridays, and contact your local representative about single-use plastic bans. You can support organizations that clean plastics from rivers before they make their way to the ocean, or even clean plastics from the ocean directly. Several groups have formed around different plastic waste reduction strategies. Organizations like The Ocean Cleanup are cleaning plastics from rivers before they make their way into the ocean, Team Seas raised over 30 million dollars to remove 30 million pounds of trash from the ocean, and clothing companies are starting to make products from recycled ocean plastic or plastics that are at a high risk of washing into the ocean from beaches and coastal communities. While none of these actions individually are the silver bullet for the world’s plastic problem, they are all important steps to the solution.

How does the private sector engage with mitigative efforts, and should more of the responsibility of cleaning plastic pollution be placed on them? Starting in the 1950s the packaging industry partnered with companies like Coca Cola to sell Americans on single-use containers. When people protested the amount of waste created, the packaging industry attempted to quell these complaints through the creation of the recycling awareness nonprofit Keep America Beautiful.

Essentially, these companies’ plan was to shift the blame away from plastic producers by putting the onus of garbage on consumers. The problem is, when focusing on consumers’ ability to reduce plastic waste through recycling – we are only addressing the symptom, not the cause. Coca Cola, Pepsi and Nestle rank as the top plastic polluters multiple years in a row, putting them at the forefront of the plastic waste problem. And while a growing number of companies, including Coca Cola, are pledging to reduce their use of plastic and increase the amount of recycling, there is reason to be skeptical. These companies have a long history of appearing to make positive changes on their plastic waste, only to fight tooth and nail against plastic pollution legislation or quietly abandon their pledges altogether.

With that said, some companies are making positive change by creating vegetable and sugar-based plastic alternatives to traditional plastics made from fossil fuels. Even companies that are not traditionally linked to plastic innovation are joining the game, like clothing brand Tom Ford who has created incentives for “innovators” to develop sustainable packing materials. While these new bioplastics made of vegetables and sugar are less carbon-intensive than traditional plastics made from oil, there is still debate over how “environmental” they truly are. Just because a bioplastic is made from vegetables does not automatically make it biodegradable. As a growing percent of consumers demand truly sustainable alternatives to plastics, companies have incentive to innovate, and we can help hold them accountable to change.

“As a growing percent of consumers demand truly sustainable alternatives to plastics, companies have incentive to innovate, and we can help hold them accountable to change.”

Finally, while no one person or company will save us from the wave of plastic pollution, there are immediate steps that governments can take to slow the tide of plastic waste. Current global plastic reduction commitments by industry and governments, consisting of levies and recycling targets, can decrease plastic mismanagement by roughly 7%. However, based on a Pew Charitable Research Trust paper, humanity has the technology and ability to reduce roughly 80% of our global plastic pollution by 2040. The Pew plan revolves around reducing the amount of new, first-use plastic created, substituting other materials for traditional plastic uses, and recycling programs with improved infrastructure. Some of these will require economic shifts away from tried and true plastic investments to new plastic alternatives, recycling facilities, and waste management infrastructure, all of which are potentially riskier. Because of this, governments will likely have to step in with policies that incentivize private companies to make these switches.

While it may seem insurmountable to change all of this infrastructure so quickly on a global scale, there is increasing pressure around the world to rein in our plastic uses. In an encouraging development, 186 nations recently updated and ratified the United Nation’s Basel Convention, a legally binding agreement reducing international plastic waste and responsibly managing exported waste and end of life disposal. Additionally, the U.N. has ongoing negotiations for a new global plastics treaty, with the intention of cutting plastic pollution.

What do we want our environmental legacy to be? I know that I don’t want kids in the future rapt in awe along the beaches of Olympic National Park, only to be pulled out of the moment as a plastic bottle washes up to their feet. As President Obama said while in Yosemite, national parks are “a place where we connect with each other and to connect to something bigger than ourselves. What an incredible idea, what a worthy investment, what a precious thing we have to pass on to the next generation.” I’ll take this one step further – our oceans, rivers, and even backyards deserve this level of reverence. We all have a voice and a vote in how we want to see our oceans and public lands protected for us and for future generations. Let’s make sure our generation is not defined by the plastic we leave behind.