The Arctic is believed to be a pristine environment, far removed from littered city streets and toxic industrial emissions. I study human pollution and I found it hard to believe that my fellow researchers and I would find so much litter out here. It was even harder to believe that what we uncovered closely resembled the contents of my own closet, over 3,000 kilometers (2,000 miles) away in Toronto.

If producing plastic waste were a race, Japan would be rushing for the gold medal. Japan and the United States both rank the highest per capita for plastic packaging waste in the world. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration set a goal to reduce Japan’s plastic waste production by 25 percent by 2030 and recent polls show the majority of the Japanese public wants strong actions to reduce plastic waste. Nevertheless, Japan is not doing enough to stem the tide of plastic entering the ocean. If Japan and the rest of the world fail to act more boldly, global oceanic plastic waste could triple by 2040. Current commitments of governments and corporations would only reduce global plastic leakage seven percent below the business-as-usual scenario. Japan’s current waste management system prioritizes recycling and incineration, encouraging a make-take-waste linear model of plastic consumption. Japan needs a circular economy built on a culture of reduction and reuse instead of single-use plastics.

In every Chinese city, there is an army of motorcycles and mopeds weaving through the traffic jams, and sometimes even venturing on sidewalks, to deliver millions of food and e-commerce orders each day. Meituan, one of China’s most popular food delivery apps, delivers 30 million orders a day, serving up 100 million plastic containers. According to Greenpeace, e-commerce and express delivery in China generated 9.4 million tons of packaging waste in 2018 and will likely triple to 41.3 million tons by 2025.

In December 2020, Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc signed the country’s National Action Plan for Management of Marine Plastic, setting an ambitious goal for the government to reduce marine plastic litter by 75 percent by 2030. Recent surveys indicate that plastics are the most prevalent and dangerous form of waste choking Vietnam’s beaches and waterways. Whether polystyrene, discarded nets, or mismanaged single-use plastics, these items are not just an eyesore, but they imperil the local ecosystem and fishing industry in Vietnam. 

Indonesia generates nearly 7 million tons of plastic waste each year but only 10 percent of that is recycled. The proportion is even lower in rural areas due to a lack of collection facilities. Waste is often burned or dumped on vacant land, and into rivers, lakes, and seas. 

With white sandy beaches, cerulean waters, and lush jungles, Indonesia’s Raja Ampat Islands are some of the world’s most beautiful islands—and currently under threat from a growing plastic waste crisis. Covering 40,000 square kilometers of land and sea off the northwest tip of West Papua, Raja Ampat lies at the intersection of the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean tides in a biodiversity hotspot known as the Coral Triangle. 

Attempts to reduce the amount of waste flowing into the ocean from Indonesia are having limited success.  

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.