Plastic Production Directly Tied to Plastic Pollution, New Study Finds

The relationship between plastic production and plastic pollution is one-to-one, new research finds.

The amount of plastic a company produces is linearly related to the amount of that company’s plastic that ends up in the environment, according to the study, which is an analysis of surveys of litter around the globe.

“When I first did the analysis, I was like, this can’t be,” says study leader Win Cowger, a research scientist at the Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research. “One-to-one lines don’t happen ever, basically. Unless they’re real.”

This tight relationship points toward the role of plastic producers — not just consumers — in keeping plastic waste out of the environment, Cowger says. “A lot of the previous research focuses on the consumer side of the plastic pollution problem,” he says. That angle is important, he says, “but at the same time, there are also other people who can be making decisions that can drastically reduce plastic pollution.”

Cowger and his colleagues used data collected by Break Free From Plastic, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing plastic pollution. Local Break Free From Plastic affiliates periodically run litter surveys in which they collect plastic waste from public areas such as parks, roadsides, or beaches and categorize the type and brand of each piece. There are a dizzying number of plastic producers, however, Cowger says, and there had previously been no good way to standardize this global data.

The research...