Our world is drowning in plastic pollution with nearly 8 million tons of single-use plastic and some 700,000 tons of abandoned fishing gear leaking into marine ecosystems each year. Plastic waste endangers marine species. For example, animals become entangled in abandoned nets. Marine birds, fish, whales and sharks are sickened or die when they accidentally ingest plastic. According to a 2017 study, around 90 percent of single-use plastic that pollutes our oceans comes from 10 rivers, 6 of which are in China. No Avenger superheroes can make this problem go away; rather the world needs heroic efforts by consumers, businesses, and governments to curb these plastic leaks. Encouragingly, China’s war on pollution has catalyzed new bottom-up activism and top-down policies that are starting to spur action to reduce plastic leakage.

In a giant building filled with dark and humid rooms, some 2 billion cockroaches are scampering around piles of food. This is not a scene out of a horror film, but an innovative business venture to help Jinan, a “small” city of 9 million in northeast China, deal with its overfull food waste. Jinan produces more than 6,000 tons of solid waste each day, and like most Chinese cities, 50 to 70 percent of it is food waste. To divert more organic waste from landfills, the municipal government partnered with the Zhangqiu District Food Waste Processing Center to use cockroaches to dispose of the 60 tons of food waste daily from district restaurants and companies as well as households in 40 waste-sorting pilot villages. The company is highly profitable as it gets the food waste for free from the city; and city then gives subsidies for each ton of food waste processed. The company also sells some 2,433 tons of dead cockroaches each year as animal feed additives. However, the small six-legged workers only devour some 100 tons of food waste per day even with expansion plans for two new factories, a mere 1.6 percent of the city’s total  waste. Cockroaches alone cannot conquer the city’s food waste challenge.