Plastics are a planetary health crisis – can you do anything about it?

A worker sorting and packing used plastic bottles and bottle caps collected in exchange for city bus tickets in Surabaya, Indonesia. The waste will be resold to plastic recycling factories. — AFP

Finally, last week, global leaders decided to take collective action on plastics waste. A resolution, agreed at the United Nations Environment Assembly held in Nairobi (from Feb 28 to March 2, 2022), calls for a plastics treaty to be negotiated over the next two years.

Plastics are a planetary health crisis. Seven billion of the estimated 9.2 billion tonnes of plastics produced between 1950 and 2017 are now waste. About 75% of that waste is either deposited in landfills or accumulating on land and in the sea.