When people dream of leaving a mark on the world, they probably aren’t thinking of an endless trail of plastic waste. Yet almost everything we use these days seems to be made of, served with, or enshrouded in plastic. Only 9 percent of that ever gets recycled. Every minute, a garbage truck’s worth of discarded plastic makes its way into our oceans, as Amanda Paulson reported last week.

This global crisis has inspired people all over the world to develop creative solutions to the problem, from inflatable booms from Holland designed to sweep up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to compostable plastic films under development in Israel.

In Kerala, India, fishermen who have grown weary of finding discarded Barbie dolls and flip-flops mixed in their hauls of shrimp and fish have banded together to do something to protect their “Mother Sea.” Some 5,000 fishermen now intentionally haul plastic refuse back to shore, where it is shredded and sold to construction crews to mix into paving asphalt.

The coordinator of the effort told National Geographic he hopes that one day, fishermen “through all of Kerala, all of India, and all of the world will join us.”

Now on to our five stories for the day, including an analysis of the emerging partnership between Russia and Saudi Arabia and a look at the latest thinking around whose history should be taught in world history class.