Plastic

Masters in lobbying, petrochemicals firms and plastic producers focus attention on waste management and recycling so they can evade their responsibility for the true problem: the growth in the volume of plastics being made.

By focusing environmental and public-health debates on the issue of waste-management, plastics producers have managed to conceal the elephant in the room.

Plastic pollution is a defining problem of our time - and one entirely of our own making. But how do we solve it? This article proposes a possible solution: a comprehensive, binding, and forward-looking global plastics treaty.

The coming set of Sustainable Development Goals will seek to protect ecosystems, conserve resources, and, as with the Millennium Development Goals, lift millions of people out of poverty. Now that solid legal ground must be developed further.