Plastic pollution touches every ocean, watershed, and food chain on Earth — but solutions are gaining ground. This archive tracks scientific advances, policy wins, and community-led efforts that are reducing plastic waste and cleaning up what’s already out there.
The developers from the Chinese University of Hong Kong believe the new bacterial-cellulose-based material can offer a sustainable, easily available and non-toxic solution to plastics in food packaging.
The new ban will also extend to plastic straws and cutlery, as the nation’s government expands its campaign against single-use plastics, which began in 2019 when it banned plastic carrier bags.
Pilot programs are ongoing in Missouri, Pennsylvania, Virginia, California, and Hawai’i are already seeing promising results.
Governor Newsom signed a new bill into law that will ban single-use plastic produce bags starting in 2025. The law requires that all such bags be replaced by recycled paper bags or compostable ones.
Ocean plastic cleanup just crossed a meaningful line: The Ocean Cleanup has now pulled more than 100,000 kilograms from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, all independently certified as ocean-sourced. The bulk came from “Jenny,” a system deployed in 2021 that swept an area roughly the size of Luxembourg across 45 extractions. Founder Boyan Slat frames it simply — repeat this haul a thousand times, and the patch is gone. The next-generation system is built to collect up to ten times faster, turning an overwhelming problem into a countable one. It’s a reminder that large-scale environmental repair, paired with cutting pollution at the source, is moving from theory into something the ocean can actually feel.
California’s single-use plastic law sets a binding target to cut throwaway plastic 25% by 2032, and it puts the bill where it belongs: on the companies making the stuff. A new producer-led organization will run recycling programs and pay $500 million a year into a fund that helps clean up the mess and address its health impacts. That’s a real shift, because for decades the cost of plastic pollution has fallen on cities and taxpayers, not the businesses profiting from it. As the largest U.S. state, California tends to pull markets and other states along with it — making this a hopeful template for tackling plastic pollution far beyond its borders.
The country generates around four million tons of plastic waste per year, about a third of which is not recycled and ends up in waterways and landfills that regularly catch fire and exacerbate air pollution.
Nzambi Matee’s Nairobi-based company, Gjenge Makers, produces a variety of different paving stones, which are already being put to use to line sidewalks, driveways, and roads.
The coating can be rinsed off with water and degrades in soil within three days, according to the study from Rutgers University.
The ban includes checkout bags, cutlery, straws and food-service ware made from or containing plastics that are hard to recycle, and will come into effect by the end of 2022.
