Plastics have shaped nearly every aspect of society. Now what?

On a blustery spring evening in Provincetown, Massachusetts, year-round residents of this New England beach town crowded into an auditorium for their yearly town meeting – that democratic exercise where locals vote on everything from school budgets to fire department personnel to playground construction. 

They considered pier repairs and stormwater improvements, fence maintenance and rental restrictions. Then, around 8 p.m., and after many gavels, they began to discuss Article 17, the agenda item that had brought Madhavi Venkatesan, associate professor of economics of sustainability at Boston’s Northeastern University, to this wind-swept tip of Cape Cod. 

Dr. Venkatesan is the founder of Sustainable Practices, a nonprofit environmental action group that is working to reduce plastic waste and use across the region. Over the past four years, she and other grassroots activists had mobilized towns across Cape Cod, including this one, to ban single-use plastic water bottles. But this evening, she hoped to push the town’s anti-plastics stance a step further.

She and other volunteers had helped organize a citizens’ petition that introduced a policy to ban single-use plastic food takeout containers and utensils. It would be a small but important move, Dr. Venkatesan says, in fighting what has become a global deluge of plastic production, consumption, and waste. 

It would also be part of a trend. Nearby Nantucket, Massachusetts, had implemented similar regulations some months earlier. Other municipalities across the country had banned everything from plastic bags to plastic straws to plastic takeout boxes. And governments big and small, from California to Mexico City to China, have passed bans with similar goals – a sign, many say, of a growing public awareness, and concern, about the world’s proliferation of plastic. 

For much of that April evening, Dr. Venkatesan felt hopeful. While she and the other volunteers had heard some concern from restaurant owners, most of the people they had met in town seemed happy to rid themselves of inexpensive plastic objects tossed after a few minutes of use. 

“The whole point of the ban and our continuing efforts has been to promote ... education,” Dr. Venkatesan says. “Our economy thrives the way it does because we don’t know the true cost of anything. We overconsume.”

But when the initiative came up for a vote, the tide seemed to change.

There hadn’t been enough time to talk the measure through, some people said. While the idea sounded nice, was it practical? What would it mean if mom and pop businesses had to switch to more expensive takeout materials while supermarkets could still sell plastic from their cooler sections? What were the economic consequences? 

Overall, there simply wasn’t enough time to decide the issue at this rushed town hall meeting, one resident said. Someone motioned to table the discussion. And then Provincetown – a small, progressive New England tourist town, known for its environmentalism and civic action – decided not to eliminate what pretty much everyone agreed was a pollutant and environmental hazard. 

This transformation, residents voted, was just too complicated.

And this, in many ways, is the story of plastics regulation overall.

There have been hundreds of new plastics-related policies introduced over the past decade, according to researchers at Duke University, who have been compiling a public database of such legislation from around the world. But even in places seemingly most ripe for change, there have been setbacks, loopholes, and unintended consequences. Meanwhile, plastic consumption – and waste – continues to increase, alongside growing demand in emerging markets and new investment by gas and oil companies, which see plastics as another product line for the fossil fuels they expect to be increasingly regulated because of climate change.

“Solving single-use plastics is hard and it’s not going to be universal,” says Kara Lavender Law, research professor of oceanography at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. “A lot of these laws are trying to just do something.”

Indeed, from Mexico to India, China to California, policymakers are trying to do something – anything – to grapple with a nearly overwhelming challenge:

Our world runs, sometimes quite literally, on plastics, the broad term for a category of materials made from synthetic polymers that are bendable, lightweight, strong, and able to be shaped into everything from your carpet to your cellphone to, yes, your running shoes. But as the world’s plastic consumption has skyrocketed, so has the amount of plastic waste, and the ecological damage that goes along with it.

According to the United Nations, the world now discards more than 440 million tons of plastic every year, twice as much as two decades ago. The vast majority of that is burned or dumped in landfills, or it “leaks” into the environment in the form of plastic litter. Take a walk pretty much anywhere in the world, and it’s hard to avoid an errant candy wrapper or plastic bag or some other bit of plastic trash. The amount of plastic in waterways is even worse. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a 620,000-square-mile swath of swirling ocean plastic, has become so large and permanent that scientists say it is developing its own ecosystem. And that’s only the surface. 

Increasingly, scientists – and laypeople – are learning how plastic breaks up into so-called microplastics: tiny bits of plastics that take up residence in the ocean, plants, our food, and even ourselves. One much-repeated study from the University of Newcastle in Australia found that humans on average consume 5 grams of plastic a week – about the size of a credit card.

“I think there is a greater awareness about the problem of plastic pollution – we see it with our own eyes, we see it on our beach vacations, plastic bags in the trees; they’re everywhere,” says Melissa Valliant, communications director of the nonprofit Beyond Plastics. “But a lot of this we’re not seeing. Plastics typically break up into smaller pieces of plastics, and they’re ending up in food, soil, drinking water, air, rain.”

Much of this waste, Ms. Valliant and other advocates point out, is from what is called “single-use” plastics – the food packaging and straws and plastic grocery bags and water bottles that are made to be used once and then discarded. According to the Minderoo Foundation’s Plastic Waste Makers Index, more single-use plastic was made in 2021 than ever before – 6 million metric tons more than in 2019. Half of all the plastic the world produces every year is intended for single use, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“Most plastics become trash within a year,” Dr. Law of Sea Education Association says. “Most plastics are not a computer or a telephone. If you look in your trash, most of it is packaging. It’s plastic film.” 

This reflects not just a waste problem but also a climate one. Life cycle greenhouse gas emissions from single-use plastics in 2021 was equivalent to the heat-trapping gas emissions of the entire United Kingdom, Minderoo estimated. Greenhouse gases are emitted when plastics are made, when they are shipped, when they break down chemically, and even when they are recycled.

And that latter bit, the recycled plastics, makes up only a tiny percentage of the world’s plastic waste. Despite the near-ubiquitous triangle of arrows on plastic objects (a symbol that, advocates point out, was developed by the plastic industry), only 9% of the world’s plastic has ever been recycled. Less than 4% of plastic is recycled in the United States, the world’s largest generator of plastic waste. (Although Asia is often blamed for plastic waste generation, data analysis by Dr. Law and others shows that the U.S. is the main culprit.)

The good news in this plastic deluge, say Ms. Valliant and others, is that people are increasingly recognizing the problem.

“We’ve seen a big shift in the last five, six years in how people view plastics,” says Kirstie Pecci, executive director of Just Zero, a U.S. nonprofit advocating zero-waste solutions. “I’ll talk to someone on the street and they’ll know about this. And it’s not just people in my echo chamber. People understand now that not only are plastics polluting, but there’s no way to get rid of them.”

Increasingly, there is pressure on governments to do something.

When Rachel Karasik, senior policy associate with the Oceans and Coastal Policy Program and the Ecosystem Services Program at Duke University, started creating an online database of plastics regulations in 2019, she and her team were able to find around 270 policy documents from around the world. Now, they have cataloged close to 900. 

“There is an increasing trend in the number of policies passed,” she says. “And anecdotally, there is an increasing trend in the scope of what policies are trying to cover.”

In 2019, for instance, Mexico City passed a ban on single-use plastics, phasing it into enforcement for the city of 9.2 million people over two years. First came the ban on plastic bags in 2020, and then the broader ban on items like utensils, straws, and to-go trays in 2021. 

Many agree the implementation initially felt promising. Most grocery stores stopped providing plastic bags at checkouts, delivery from formal restaurants began to arrive in paper bags and biodegradable packaging, and many informal stalls cut back on plastic straws or utensils. 

But, more than two years into implementation, the law has fallen short on the broader hopes for an enforced ban on plastics, says Juan Carlos Carrillo, program coordinator at the Mexican Center for Environmental Law, a nongovernmental organization that works to improve the application of environmental law and to inform the public about environmental risks. 

“There has been change, but it’s insufficient,” he says. 

Hurdles have included the pandemic, which saw many vendors and clients doubling down on single-use plastic use in the belief that it provided an extra measure of sanitation. “The pandemic completely changed the context of the law,” says Mr. Carrillo. “By the start of 2020, it was common that a shop would tell you, ‘I can’t give you a bag,’ and there were certain inspections taking place. But by 2021, we were in the middle of the pandemic, inspections were suspended, and COVID-19 really intensified the consumption of takeout food – and plastics. That was when this law started to die.” 

There were other unintended consequences. When the 2021 phase went into effect, women across the city were shocked to see tampons with plastic applicators disappear from shelves overnight, with few, if any, alternatives. Many accused lawmakers of ignoring the gender implications of their policies.

Now, in the leadup to Mexico’s 2024 presidential election, in which Mexico City’s mayor is seeking the ruling party's nomination, the political will to hold stores and vendors accountable has fallen even further, Mr. Carrillo says. So far, in fact, that many vendors assume the law no longer applies.

“The ban on single-use plastics was canceled because of the pandemic,” says Alfonso, who runs a barbacoa stand outside a large hospital in central Mexico City with his wife and young son every weekend. It’s a misconception repeated by many vendors across the city. Alfonso, like others interviewed for this story, did not want to give his full name out of fear he could be singled out for enforcement.

Emiliano, who sells napkins, cups, plates, and other biodegradable and single-use plastic items at a stall in a public market here, agrees. “It might be the law on paper, but the city stopped paying attention.”

Still, he says, he now stocks more biodegradable products and says that most people try to at least appear to abide by the law. He holds up a roll of plastic bags featuring green triangular “recycle” symbols and explains they are marketed as biodegradable, but he says the price and feel of the bags suggest they’re just regular plastic.

“Really, it’s the companies making these products who the government needs to be monitoring,” he says. “Lots of vendors buy this and think they are helping the planet, but it’s single-use plastic in disguise.”

Many advocates would agree with Emiliano.

Although “biodegradable” plastic is often presented as a “green” alternative to traditional, single-use plastic, critics point out that it can still pose an environmental hazard because it only degrades under certain conditions in a process that can take decades. And some worry that bans on single-use plastics result in overreliance on biodegradables rather than real transformation.

“This is against the principle of source reduction,” said Wan Jie, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, according to the state-run China Daily last March.

China in 2020 announced a plan to curb plastic pollution with a national ban on single-use plastics. The plan came as China’s plastic waste surged – in part with the explosion of packaging generated by e-commerce – toward a projected 45 million tons in 2025.

Under the three-phase plan, China would gradually restrict plastics with the ultimate goal of banning the production, use, and recycling of disposable plastics nationwide by 2025.

So far, the implementation has been uneven, according to experts and Chinese media reports.

“It’s very ambitious,” says Yanzhong Huang, author of “Toxic Politics: China’s Environmental Health Crisis and Its Challenge to the Chinese State.” “They are indeed making some progress, especially in the large cities,” says Dr. Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It would be safe to say they haven’t fully achieved what they planned to achieve by the end of 2022, in part because of the pandemic but also in part because of the problems of the policy itself.”

In 2020, the first year of the plan, the goal was to ban single-use plastic bags, straws, and utensils from major cities. For example, some big city supermarkets largely adopted biodegradable plastic bags; smaller grocery stores did not. The same was true for takeout food packaging, with restaurants showing mixed results in making the switch.

In Beijing, major supermarket sales of plastic shopping bags fell 37% in 2021 compared with 2020, according to a report in China Daily. At the same time, the pandemic and China’s strict “zero-COVID” policies contributed to major increases in single-use plastics, from takeout containers to medical supplies, experts say.

All of this points to something Alejandra Warren, co-founder and executive director of the California-based nonprofit Plastic Free Future, says is important when thinking about moving away from plastics. Real transformation, she says, is not just about reducing the use of one material. It is about reshaping entire systems – of food production, consumption, lifestyle, and economics.

“We normalize plastic so much in our lives; we stop seeing it,” she says. “But we need to open our eyes and start seeing the connections between the climate crisis, plastic pollution, and environmental injustice.” 

Plastics tend to be both processed and disposed of in lower-income communities of color, she says. And marginalized communities are least likely to have access to plastic alternatives, she adds.

“Charges for containers and cups, they impact low-income communities,” she says. “If you are taking public transportation to take kids to school and you forget your reusable bag – that impacts you more.”

Policies can land hardest on those with the least, she and others say.

In the bustling markets of New Delhi’s Chittaranjan Park neighborhood, for instance, street vendors and small-shop owners say they are bearing the brunt of India’s ambitious new plastics regulations.

As of July 1 of last year, India banned the manufacture, import, stocking, distribution, sale, and use of 19 specific single-use plastic products with “low utility and high littering potential,” including cutlery, candy sticks, and wrapping films around sweets and cigarette packets. Starting this year, the ban also applies to plastic carry bags with thickness lower than 120 microns.

Sachin Kumar, a vegetable and fruit vendor, says authorities of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi enforced the ban strictly at the start.

“I followed the ban, but customers quickly stopped buying produce from me. They all asked for plastic carry bags,” he says. “Not just at the market, even when I go door to door with my cart, they refuse to take the vegetables in hand or their own bags. They ask for plastic.”

Mr. Kumar says he tried to use the costlier cloth alternative, but he incurred a loss, so he began to hide plastic carry bags in his cart. Meanwhile, the market that he visits every dawn to purchase supplies for the day continues to sell produce in the same plastic bags that authorities prohibit vendors from using.

Mr. Kumar is aware of the irony and thinks the ban is enforced only at the level of charging penalties from those like him. “It’s all about the money,” he says.

Many advocates agree with him and say that the burden of plastics regulation should be shifted to the companies who make the material in the first place. At the end of last year, California attempted to do just that, tasking the plastics industry with reducing the percentage of single-use plastic that needed to be recycled.

While some advocates say there are still loopholes for industry in California’s law, it is widely seen as one of the country’s first broad “extended producer responsibility” regulations, which works to shift environmental burdens from consumers to corporations.

Mexico City’s food infrastructure is in many ways well suited for a ban on plastics. Large public markets, typically with one located in every neighborhood, have vendors cutting meat, weighing vegetables, or measuring out grains for customers on the spot. Many products are sold in bulk from large bins or jars, avoiding the prepackaged presentation of much of U.S. grocery shopping. 

What’s missing, says a butcher at one of the vast markets here, is the education of the public. “I don’t know how I can hand over a packet of meat without involving plastic,” he says.

After hammering down six cuts of pork into thin milanesas tucked between two thin sheets of plastic, he says the real solution to decreasing the use of plastic would be encouraging customers to bring their own containers to schlep things home. 

Slowly, some people are doing just that.

Frank Hernández, who sells hamburgers and hot dogs from a street stand, says he has noticed a shift among his clientele since Jan. 1, 2021, when Mexico City’s environment secretary posted on Twitter that “from today on, Mexico City is without single-use plastics.” 

“I’d say about 10% of the people coming for to-go orders bring their own Tupperware or plates to take their food with them,” he says, while wiping down his cutting boards as he sets up the stall, called McPanchos.

“I think the law is a good idea,” he says. “We need to help the environment where we can; it’s just that sometimes life gets in the way.”

Across the Atlantic, entrepreneurs in the European Union are trying to make plastic-free life easier for consumers, bolstered by new single-use plastics bans. Berlin-based product designer Julian Nachtigall-Lechner, for instance, saw a way to reduce plastic consumption and reusing another kind of waste by creating a reusable coffee cup made of discarded coffee grounds. That gave rise to his company, Kaffeeform. In 2015, the company started with just three vendors, but today more than 2,000 locations sell more than 100,000 Kaffeeform mugs a year across Europe – a boom that coincided with EU-wide legislation banning single-use plastics for which affordable alternatives are available.

“The plastics restrictions helped us get an increased awareness,” Mr. Nachtigall-Lechner says.

EU law now mandates that shops accept customers’ containers. The law also says plastic utensils, drinking straws, stirrers, cotton swabs, and other single-use items can no longer be produced within the EU.

In the U.S., Alison Rogers Cove runs a company called Usefull, which combines technology and reusable metal containers to create a plasticless takeout system for colleges and municipalities around the country. The idea is straightforward: Customers take their to-go food in one of Usefull’s containers, and then return the container later at a drop-off location, using the company’s app. 

If one steps back, Ms. Cove says, it’s not a particularly revolutionary idea; after all, we don’t usually toss out our plates at home after we eat on them. She hopes that for the college students using Usefull on campus, this sort of reuse will become the norm, and the consume-discard model will evolve into what’s strange. With more municipal plastics bans across the country, she hopes to expand her model into more cities and neighborhoods.

“This is a very practical thing,” she says. “It’s expensive to use single-use plastic, it’s a waste of resources, and it’s not a great user experience. ... I think mindsets will change.” 

This global report includes contributions from special correspondent Whitney Eulich in Mexico City; special contributor Sarita Santoshini in New Delhi; staff writer Alessandro Clemente in Provincetown, Massachusetts; staff writer Ann Scott Tyson in Beijing; and special correspondent Lenora Chu in Berlin.