The Pollution Solution

Plastic waste took up so much space in the whale’s stomach that she says it likely made the animal feel deceptively full, causing malnourishment that eventually led to death.

“It was an ‘aha’ moment for me,” recalls Cabrera, founder and CEO of FutureSwell, an ocean conservation advocacy organization, and a Panda Ambassador for WWF-US. “You can’t really work to protect whales and other marine life if you’re not addressing plastic because it’s a leading threat.”

Found in every corner of the planet, from Arctic ice sheets and remote islands to Mount Everest and the bottom of the Mariana Trench, plastic pollution is one of the world’s most worrying and urgent problems. Every year, 11 million metric tons of plastic waste enter our oceans—the equivalent of a dump truck of the stuff every minute—where it kills millions of fish, seabirds, sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals and wreaks havoc on marine and coastal habitats.

Many of those animals, including endangered species such as Steller sea lions and North Atlantic right whales, become entangled in abandoned fishing gear or other debris and suffer injuries or drown. Wildlife like seabirds and fish often inadvertently swallow plastic while feeding or mistake it for food, causing them to choke, damaging internal organs, or suppressing their urge to eat until they starve. More than half of the world’s sea turtles have eaten plastic waste.

And the problem is only getting worse. While the number of voluntary national policies to address the plastics crisis has increased significantly over the past five years, worldwide plastic pollution has increased by 50%.

“At the current rate, we’re on track to double the amount of plastic we produce and triple the amount that goes into our oceans by 2040, just 15 years from now,” warns Erin Simon, WWF-US’s vice president of plastic waste and business.

In a memorable scene from the 1967 movie The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock is told, “There’s a great future in plastics.” The line was prophetic. Plastics are strong, lightweight, cheap to produce, endlessly flexible, and resistant to corrosion—qualities that have made them an integral part of modern life.

Omnipresent in product packaging and food wrappers, clothing and footwear, water pipes, building materials, and electronics, plastics have enabled us to keep food fresher for longer and reduced food waste, facilitated advancements in healthcare and medical devices, helped us manufacture more fuel-efficient cars and airplanes and energy-saving homes, and delivered public health benefits.

But plastics are also durable—extraordinarily so. Once in nature, they can take between 20 and 500 years to degrade. Even then, plastics never really disappear; they break down over time into smaller and smaller pieces called microplastics—particles measuring less than 5 mm (about the size of a grain of rice), which mounting evidence suggests may pose significant threats to human health.

Shed into the environment and easily ingested or inhaled, these tiny specks have been detected in human blood, hearts, brains, livers, and even placentas. Recent studies have shown that exposure to microplastics may be associated with some cancers, heart and lung diseases, and neurological issues. And though research on their effects is still limited, scientists suspect microplastics could be a factor in Alzheimer’s and infertility, among other conditions.

Thousands of the more than 13,000 chemicals used in plastics are also considered hazardous, particularly in high concentrations. Leached from everyday products, water, and food into our bodies, “forever chemicals” such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAs)—found in nonstick cookware, carpets, and waterproof clothes—are known carcinogens that can disrupt hormones. Then there’s the pollution tied to plastics production. In communities where large numbers of plastic-producing petrochemical factories are located, chemicals that contaminate air and drinking water have been linked to alarming environmental and health impacts, with historically disenfranchised people often hit the hardest.

On a global scale, plastics production is a key factor in climate change. “They’re manufactured with fossil fuels, so from the moment they’re made, they’re contributing to climate change, threatening habitats and communities,” says Simon. “If we keep on with business as usual, emissions associated with plastic production will reach 15% of the global carbon budget by 2050. This has to be stopped.”

How? That’s the complicated, momentous question facing the more than 150 United Nations member states participating in negotiations to develop a global plastics treaty.

During discussions at the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) meeting in November 2024—intended to be the fifth and final meeting held since 2022—negotiators came closer to hammering out an agreement, but a small group of nations and petrochemical companies blocked progress. Now, crucial decisions will occur at the next round of talks in August 2025, when countries will have another chance to finalize the treaty text and set ambitious measures to counter the rising plastic pollution that threatens the environment, economy, and human health.

WWF, in concert with companies, nonprofit groups, and citizen activists representing communities, is continuing to advocate for ambitious change, beginning with a global ban on harmful and unnecessary plastic products and their most dangerous related chemicals. In addition, the coalition is pushing for a reduction of plastics manufacturing and the redesign and phase-out of problematic plastics—especially single-use products such as plastic bags, bottles, beverage straws, and coffee stirrers designed to be tossed after one use or that can’t feasibly be recycled because they’re too small.

To be effective, WWF argues, the treaty must also include a dedicated financial mechanism that will provide equitable, accessible support for all countries—particularly developing ones—to implement the treaty, as well as requirements for strengthening and adapting it over time.

This overarching focus on the front end of plastics’ life cycle represents a shift from the back-end approach common in earlier decades, which typically concentrated on waste management, site cleanups, and recycling.

“If you had a leak in your bathroom, would you first bring out a mop and start cleaning it up, or would you first stop the leak?” asks Simon. “Obviously, you’d stop the leak. But to do that, we have to make less. We can’t manage what we have today, let alone twice that. This is why WWF’s strategy is primarily about turning off the tap of plastics production and stopping that leakage at all points.”

Many businesses are on board with this approach, asking for common goals and stricter, standardized regulations. To unite them, in 2022, WWF and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation convened the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty, whose members now include more than 240 major corporations, financial institutions, NGOs, and other organizations that support a shared vision for a circular economy in which plastics never become waste or pollution.

Research shows just 56 companies are responsible for more than half of the world’s branded plastic waste. Together, names such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, and others are calling for a treaty that reduces plastics production, sets policies around design and reuse, and improves waste management streams, accelerating systemic change across the plastics life cycle.

Another major thrust of WWF’s strategy is fostering collective, coordinated action by all stakeholders, including plastics producers, governments, communities, and individuals. “It can’t be just one of those groups,” Simon says.

Perhaps most important, the treaty would be legally binding, with all signatories agreeing to its terms and subject to international scrutiny and accountability. “Compliance can’t be voluntary—that doesn’t work,” adds Simon. “It’s the difference between countries pledging to try or being required to act.”

Beyond scaling back plastics production and waste, WWF and its negotiating partners support stronger policies that will enable a transition to a more circular plastics economy.

One tool that has broad support is called extended producer responsibility, or EPR. In effect for years in Australia, Canada, and parts of Europe, EPR is an environmental policy that holds companies responsible for funding and managing plastic products throughout their life cycle, shifting the burden of plastic waste and recycling away from city or state municipalities back onto the companies that make plastic products.

In some EPR programs, for example, producers pay “eco-modulated” fees for their plastic packaging materials—higher fees for materials with a heavier environmental toll and lower ones for more sustainable choices. This payment structure, which accounts for factors such as material type and recyclability, can nudge companies toward reducing their plastic footprint, adopting reuse and refill models, and using more recycled content.

“The best EPR models have built-in systems that incentivize producers to move the end of life of their plastic products to more circular end points over time and can encourage innovation,” explains Dr. Fisk Johnson, Chairman and CEO of SC Johnson, a member of the business coalition. He says that SC Johnson has been working to incorporate recycled plastic into its products for more than 30 years, but that companies like his still face challenges, including a limited supply of recycled plastic and varying standards for design and recyclability. “The solution,” he says, “is getting everyone in the plastic ecosystem to work collectively to level the competitive playing field and capture economies of scale. That takes a regulatory framework like EPR.”

“By improving the effectiveness of recycling systems,” he adds, “EPR programs could increase recycling rates and considerably broaden access to recycling services.” And they could help finance and build recycling capacity in lower-income and small island countries, which produce and consume less plastic than higher-income nations yet bear the brunt of the pollution problem and often lack systems to safely manage it.

Simon is especially optimistic about the potential impact of EPR in the US, where the overall recycling rate is just 8.5%, one of the worst among high-income countries. In the five states that have enacted EPR legislation since 2017—California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, and Oregon—recycling rates are likely to be dramatically higher or will be soon.

But while the country is making strides, she says, “we need clear, coordinated federal policies to replace the hodgepodge of largely ineffective recycling systems across states and to enable companies to deploy circular solutions more effectively.”

Dr. Johnson agrees. “Federal EPR legislation can significantly reduce the complexity and costs that are beginning to emerge from differing state-by-state regulation,” he says. “We need a common standard—design criteria, labeling criteria, product criteria—that states should adhere to as they choose to implement their own EPR systems.”

Now, says Dr. Johnson, one of the big questions going forward is, “How do we preserve the enormous benefits of plastic we enjoy today but solve the pollution problem and do it in a way that doesn’t hurt people who can least afford the necessary changes?”

Looking ahead to the INC 5.2 negotiations, he, Simon, and other business coalition members and partners are cautiously hopeful that such a goal is achievable—and that they can successfully bridge divides and reach an agreement despite pushbacks over language around sustainable production and consumption, chemicals of concern, and financial mechanisms to support waste management infrastructure in the least developed countries.

Circular economies will help stem our demand for new virgin plastics by ensuring that the plastic products we rely on every day are reused and recycled, and that the valuable resources we’re taking from the planet to make the material aren’t quickly ending up as the trash polluting it.

But there’s still a lot of work to do to get to the finish line, says Simon. “Countries must come to the table ready to fight for our future,” she says. “The current draft has some of the key ingredients for success, but we can’t back down on delivering a legally binding text that finally puts us on a course to eliminate plastic pollution.”

In the end, Simon says, we must mend the broken and complex system that has gotten us to where we are today. “To address the plastic crisis at the scope and scale necessary, we need holistic, systemic change and smart plastic policy on the national and global levels,” she says. “We need an all-in approach so the plastics and materials that we manufacture and use can be recycled into valuable products that we use again and again and again. That,” she concludes, “is our best hope.”