The following article by Associate Policy Fellow Christina Cilento was published Dec. 23, 2021, on grist.org and is being republished by permission.
Last year, I resolved to reduce my consumption of plastic in every way I could. I’ve been an environmental advocate for many years, but after living and traveling across Southeast Asia, inhaling fumes from burning plastic in Laos and witnessing heaps of trash choking Manila Bay, plastic pollution was no longer an “out of sight, out of mind” problem for me. I learned that the United States generates the most plastic waste of any country, that less than 10 percent of it is successfully recycled, and that much of it gets offloaded overseas for other nations to deal with. Inspired by the Malaysian and Philippine governments, both of which famously rejected barges of plastic trash sent to them by wealthier nations, I decided it was time to treat this glut of disposables as my problem, not someone else’s. So I supercharged my efforts back home in 2021. …