The year of the Ox came riding in on an electric vehicle (EV) with news that both the United States and Chinese governments were accelerating efforts to expand EV markets. In 2020, China sold 41 percent of the world’s EVs and now, the United States wants to be in the race too. On January 1 of this year, China’s Ministry of Finance slashed subsidies on electric, plug-in hybrids, and fuel cell automobiles by 20 percent, which is around 9 percent of the average retail price. By the end of 2022, it will halt subsidies in an EV Darwinism move as it did with solar PV panel companies to give a boost to the strongest players. Also in January, the Biden Administration announced a plan to electrify 645,000 federally procured vehicles.

China, which threw global plastic recycling markets into disarray in 2018 with its Green Sword policy banning plastic waste imports, has been ratcheting up domestic regulations to reign in single-use plastics. In January of 2020, China’s National Reform Development Commission announced a stringent policy for a nationwide plastic bag ban by 2022. China is not alone. Bans and taxes on plastic bags are spreading around the globe and they might soon come to your neighborhood, if they haven’t already. 

Indonesia. Crystal blue waters, palm trees swaying in the wind, endless sandy beaches, lush tropical jungles, towering mountains, lakes, rivers, and more; all are images that may come to mind when you think of Indonesia. But like other Asian countries, Indonesia’s booming development and increased consumption have generated an immense amount of waste, particularly single-use plastics that are leaking into the ocean. 

In May 2009, I was traveling with researchers from the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences to learn about rural water pollution. One of them realized it was Mother’s Day and decided to treat the 3 mothers in the group to a fishing trip. We soon pulled into a farm with rows of large concrete ponds filled with fish. This was my first introduction to the world’s largest aquaculture industry, where fish are farmed in ponds, reservoirs, and even rice paddies. China produces 50 million tons of seafood annually, far eclipsing the 0.5 million tons farmed in the United States.

Back in 2005, as a part of the Coca-Cola Company Environmental Team, April Crow was a pioneer working on the concept of sustainable packaging. In the mid-2000s, despite stories on the great pacific garbage patch, ocean plastic waste was not high on policy or corporate agendas. April believed this was due to a lack of scientific data on the scale and threat of plastic waste. To fill this gap, April’s team partnered with Ocean Conservancy to convene leading scientists to help fill these knowledge gaps. Their research found the majority of marine plastic pollution stemmed from five Asian countries that lacked waste management infrastructure, which if fully in place, could reduce leakage by 45 percent. This insight raised a challenging question—how can companies and aid agencies bring funding to these markets to facilitate better infrastructure and prevent plastic leakage?

“There is one thing I think about a lot: how do you get people active on plastic waste? How do you structure having impact?”

Judith Enck discovered her interest in environmental activism when she interned in college for the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) and was asked to lobby for the Returnable Container Act (commonly referred to as the Bottle Bill), which had stalled for 10 years. The difficulty she faced in lobbying for this relatively simple bill motivated her to return for a second internship. After graduation, she abandoned plans for social work or law school to return to environmental advocacy and quickly became the executive director of Environmental Advocates NY. The bill eventually became a New York State law in 1982 and has since prevented the unnecessary export or landfilling of billions of plastic bottles. Judith learned important lessons from that victory and has been making her mark on America’s waste policy ever since. 

The Huangzhong district in Xining city, the capital of Qinghai Province, is home to 8,980 families, all of whom received assistance under China’s national policy to eradicate extreme poverty (below 2,300 yuan per person per year). Through social assistance and private sector financing, Huangzhong district succeeded in lifting all 28,706 residents out of extreme poverty after a four-year battle. In April 2019 the district proudly celebrated its official removal of the “poverty alleviation county” label. 

Large pollution can come in small packages. This is the case with the small plastic pouches, called sachets, that constitute a major source of the plastic waste crisis plaguing the Philippines, a country ranked third in the world for ocean plastic leakage. Filipino consumers throw away a staggering 163 million of these difficult-to-recycle plastic packets each day, which adds up to about 60 billion a year, enough to carpet 130,000 soccer fields.