NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Imagine a garbage truck full of plastic: old food containers, water bottles, wrapping from packages delivered to your door. That’s the amount of plastic waste that is dumped into the ocean every single minute. What’s worse, as demand for plastics grows, experts estimate that by 2030, this rate will increase to the equivalent of two garbage trucks per minute – and by 2040, three garbage trucks per minute.

Plastic pollution is becoming inescapable. Microplastics – tiny pieces of plastic so small that the human eye cannot easily see them – are now contaminating the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, and, unsurprisingly, our bodies themselves. Much of this plastic pollution comes from mismanaged waste that is openly dumped into the ocean as well as fields, pits, and rivers, and then leaks into the broader environment. Once plastic gets into the environment, it is extremely difficult and expensive to remove.

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