Map the Laws
Search the LawsBreaking down the lifecycle of plastic. Click to explore each topic in detail to learn more.
False Solutions
Fundamentally, real solutions to plastic pollution are grounded in zero-waste values and nontoxic, regenerative materials and systems that uphold justice for people and protect the planet from further damage. Unfortunately, industry systems extracting and processing fossil fuels and manufacturing plastic delay and distract from real solutions with false solutions so that they may continue to produce polluting petrochemicals and plastic—and as a result, continue to profit. This effort to derail progress to end plastic pollution comes at the expense of human health and wellbeing—especially for people living on the frontlines of fossil fuel extraction and refining, as well as plastic production, storage, transportation, and disposal.
Learn more about false solutions:
Greenwashing
Efforts to intentionally market false solutions is known as greenwashing. Industries have targeted consumers, and also policymakers, journalists, and others to spread misinformation with a wide variety of tactics, including deceptive public service announcements, ads, press releases, research, and even organizations with green-sounding names. Lobbying efforts are especially problematic as they cause serious misalignment in policy and a slowing or even reversal of progress to address the core cause of plastic pollution: continued plastic production.
Learn more about areas of concern, false solutions, greenwashing, and industries’ efforts to lobby for damaging legislation:
- Greenwashing Guide for Journalists explains how to identify and avoid spreading industry misinformation in reporting on plastic pollution science, policy, and solutions.
- Plastic Solutions Review provides clear information and analysis of industries’ proposed false solutions, with insights for shaping effective legislation, reviewed by an expert panel of scientists.
- The Plastic Trap is an investigative story in Open Mind that exposes the history of plastic industry greenwashing and the dangerous effects of false solutions and lobbying efforts to implement them in legislation.
Solutions
Solutions to plastic pollution exist. Solutions include the enactment and enforcement of strong policies and regenerative strategies that focus on plastic pollution prevention; a significant improvement in business practices; a shift in societal values and culture; and individual behavior changes. When implementing solutions across topic areas, it is important to center and listen to voices from the frontline communities disproportionately harmed by plastic and the plastic and petrochemical industries, and other forms of pollution, colonization, and violence.
Solutions to plastic pollution must become widely adopted and systemic—that is, fundamental to the way human societies operate. Legislation can help incentivize and reinforce necessary systems change. For solutions to succeed, they must be nontoxic, just, equitable, and accessible to all people, everywhere, and embrace the principles of refill, regenerate, repair, share, reuse, and refuse single-use.
