Plastics have boosted our economy because they are highly flexible, durable, and cheap. However, their massive use has created an enormous global problem with environmental, economic, social, and health repercussions. Existing international measures to deal with plastic pollution are insufficient to successfully addressing the problem. So legal provisions banning the dumping of plastic waste at sea for example have not been adequate to reduce the amount of plastic waste that reaches the marine environment. Without large-scale efforts targeting plastic waste at its landbased sources, the problem will get worse. The only viable solution to the problem would therefore be to stop plastic waste from entering the oceans in the first place. That is what the authors Nils Simon and Maro Luisa Schulte propose in this paper: To launch negotiations on a plastics convention and begin to end this irresponsible disaster.
