How WIRED’s recent piece on the solution to plastic pollution circumvents the emerging science on plastic and public health.

WIRED’s article, “The Cure for Disposable Plastic Crap Is Here—and It’s Loony,” highlights the urgent and daunting task of tackling plastic pollution, but completely misses the point that the solution to the plastic problem is actually simpler than you would think: We need to stop producing so much of the stuff. 

The science is clear that we can’t begin to address the plastic crisis without first drastically reducing the amount of plastic that gets produced in the first place — so much of which is, indeed, “crap” we don’t need. This is critical for the climate (since 99% of plastic is made from fossil fuels) but cutting production is equally important for our health. Because plastic truly is everywhere, including but not limited to breast milk, the brain and testicles — and with devastating health impacts. 

The author Clive Thompson gets it right that the solution to plastic pollution needs to be multi-pronged, and reuse systems such as the Reusables startup Thompson profiles are important. Even “loony” bioplastic startups like the one featured could also be a small piece of that puzzle. But we urgently need to shift the onus from how to make better plastic to how to sharply decrease the production of all plastics.

And Thompson completely misses that plastic, whether single-use or reusable, is causing a global health crisis. While eliminating single-use plastics, like those pesky plastic bags, is an essential step to tackling the plastic pollution that is clogging our waterways, it does little to address the health impacts from microplastics that are now clogging our arteries. 

Plastics — including reusable plastic items such as food storage containers, children’s toys or shower curtains — pose dangerous health risks, such as through shedding microplastics. Microplastics have been found everywhere, from the clouds atop Mount Fuji to uteruses. We are constantly consuming them through food, drink and even just breathing, as microplastics float in the air around us. Studies have shown that these microplastics significantly damage cells in the human body, leading to serious health effects, including cancers, impaired lung function and birth defects. Further, wearing and washing polyester-based clothing, heating up food in plastic containers and drinking out of reusable plastic water bottles can expose you to hazardous chemicals, including endocrine-disrupting chemicals. 

Another topic this article ignores is that plastic isn’t just polluting people and the planet at the stages of consumption and disposal, its toxic impacts begin at production. Plastic begins as a fossil fuel, an extractive and pollutive process in and of itself, and then is converted into plastic products in places like “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana: here, plastics plants along the lower Mississippi River have contributed to the highest rates of cancer in the United States, disproportionately borne by the area’s Black residents.

As the author notes, on average only 9% of plastics are recycled on an annual basis, but (here’s what Thompson misses) plastic recycling itself is also a health concern. Plastic recycling facility workers and nearby residents are exposed to harmful chemicals when they inhale toxic dust or fumes emitted during the recycling process. In fact, research has shown that recycled plastics can actually pose greater health risks than “virgin” plastic, because they contain hundreds of toxic chemical compounds, including pharmaceutical drugs, pesticides and industrial compounds, which end up in our bodies and environment.

The author spends a lot of time exploring the claims of Kjell Olav Maldum, the CEO of Infinitum (a Norwegian chemical recycling plant), but chemical recycling is no miracle for plastic pollution: in fact, it is expensive, unproven at scale, and (surprise, surprise) also a huge public health risk, not to mention a climate disaster. This is why so many environmental groups and even many in the recycling industry itself are calling chemical recycling a false solution.

Plastic is one of the most urgent environmental and public health crises of our time, and it warrants solutions that underscore both of these points. Things like bioplastics and “loony” startup solutions may play a role. But to solve the plastic crisis, what we really need is system change and the key to unlocking system change is cutting production — through global treaties, national policies and firm market rules.