What needs to be done to end plastic pollution
Urgent action is needed to combat plastic pollution and its health impacts.
Human appetite for plastics continues to grow at an alarming rate, as unsustainable as it is unnecessary. This year alone, the world is projected to consume more than half a billion tons of plastic — a nearly 30% jump in just 12 months. Even in the best-case scenario, only one-fifth of that waste is economically recyclable, whereas in reality less than one-tenth is recycled.
What happens to the remaining 90% of waste, much of it which can last up to 500 years, is a tragedy of our own making. Plastics have become omnipresent — found everywhere, from the peaks of remote mountains and depths of oceans to the tissues of human bodies and even unborn foetuses, as well as the food we eat. What began as a revolutionary material for convenience and efficiency is now deeply entwined with one of the planet’s most pressing environmental and health threats.
The growing crisis of plastic pollution is threatening our collective future. This World Environment Day, there is an urgent need for the citizens of the world to come together and agree on ways to end plastic pollution, including by phasing out single-use plastics.
Our consumption patterns and dependence on plastics must change. This depends on the choices we make, including shaping industries, shifting markets and redefining our collective future. Together, we can bring about an end to plastic pollution.
We know plastics have brought many benefits to modern life, from energy efficiency to health care products. And some industries have found them particularly useful. Agriculture and its allied sectors, for example, have used plastics to deliver safe, fresh food to consumers.
But our addiction to plastic has now far exceeded its value addition and ability to absorb. It is time for an urgent cost-benefit correction that fully accounts for the harmful impacts of plastic pollution. Farmers frequently lack awareness and capacity for proper disposal, while inadequate infrastructure for collection, segregation, and recycling aggravates the problem. In many countries, including India, plastics are often burned, buried, or left in fields, which harms livestock and contaminates soil and water; they eventually run into rivers, pollute oceans, and degrade ecosystems.
For instance, microscopic marine algae known as phytoplankton, which form the base of several aquatic food webs, harbour microplastics that end up in the food cycle of aquatic organisms, fish, and ultimately humans.
Microplastics and nanoplastics resulting from the breakdown of plastics are found in human livers, testicles, brain, and even in breast milk. Studies have shown that, on average, a litre of bottled water contains about 240,000 microplastics.
In addition, plastic production — an energy-hungry process — was responsible for more than 3% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2020, researchers estimate.
FAO’s landmark report, released in 2021, estimated 12.5 million tons of plastic products were used in agricultural value chains globally in 2019. Crop production and livestock sectors were the largest users at 10 million tons annually, followed by fisheries and aquaculture with 2.1 million tons, and forestry with 0.2 million tons.
To tackle this issue, India has updated its Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016, with key amendments in 2021, 2022, and 2024. These include a ban on select single-use plastics, the introduction of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging, and new provisions to address microplastics, biodegradable plastics, and to promote waste reduction through deposit and buy-back systems.
These are far-ranging actions, putting India’s legislation ahead of many countries in vision and scope. At the same time, there remains significant scope to strengthen and expand implementation of these efforts further. Research and development will be a critical step, and the UN in India, including FAO and UNEP aim to partner with the government by introducing global good practices.
In February 2025, FAO published a provisional Voluntary Code of Conduct outlining principles, actions, and measures that governments, plastic manufacturers, and agrifood stakeholders can adopt to promote sustainable management of plastics in agriculture. FAO’s 2021 Assessment on Agricultural Plastics and their Sustainability advocated the so-called ‘6R model’ — Refuse, Redesign, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recover — for sustainable plastic management across the lifecycle, and recommended safe landfill disposal if 6R is unfeasible, while strictly avoiding open burning.
UNEP’s Plastics Initiative adopts a programmatic approach, delivering projects at global, regional, and national levels across high-impact sectors and value chains. This ensures efforts are tailored to specific contexts while contributing to the overall goal of reducing plastic pollution. In India, the ‘Tide Turners Plastic Challenge’ has brought together about 700,000 youth to encourage individual actions to end pollution. Earlier this week, at a summit in New Delhi, we saw how many of these inspiring tide turners are creating local solutions to the plastics problem — from tribal women in Madhya Pradesh replacing plastic serving plates with sal-leaf plates to a group in Telangana repurposing plastic bottles and waste and turning them into life jackets.
We need more of these citizen-led actions. In the spirit of the Prime Minister’s Mission LiFE, lifestyles for the environment, jointly launched with the UN Secretary-General in 2022, focus should be on changing consumer behaviour, looking beyond recycling, and finding ways to limit the environmental and health problems caused by plastic pollution.
We need a life-cycle approach grounded in principles of circularity in dealing with plastics. This means looking at every stage of products’ lives, from their production, design, and consumption to their disposal. Research suggests the life-cycle approach could save the world $4.5 trillion in social and environmental costs through 2040.
We should prioritise ending use of single-use plastic products. It means finding alternatives to plastics in a range of products, which is far less difficult that imagined once you try. And when we absolutely must use plastic, it means redesigning those products to last longer, be reused and ultimately recycled to prevent them from seeping into the environment.
For these things to happen, to build a whole-of-society Jan Andolan, we need strong regulatory regimes, effective compliance, enhanced consumer awareness, finance and responsible business leadership — all coupled with cost efficiency, profit potential and reduced environmental impacts of alternatives that we are investing in.
India is uniquely placed in many ways to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals at such scale sufficient to move global targets. Ending plastic pollution is an important part of that, for the country and for the world. The time is now, and the place is here.
Takayuki Hagiwara is FAO representative in India, Balakrishna Pisupati is head, UNEP India, and Shombi Sharp is UN resident coordinator, India. The authors are part of Team UN in India. The views expressed are personal
