SMART TAKE: Earth Day 2024 Calls for Planet Over Plastics!

This year’s Earth Day theme- “Planet vs. Plastic”- calls for a 60% reduction in plastic use by 2040. The billions of items of plastic waste that pollute oceans, lakes, and rivers, are also making their way into food systems, resulting in a direct threat to human health. Jennifer Turner, Director of the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum, provides insights into how we can reduce plastic waste. She talks about what individuals can do, how Europe is setting the standard for responsible plastic use at a company-level, and why we can’t recycle our way out of the eight billion tons of plastic we have created during the past sixty years.
The China Environment Forum and Serious Games Initiative have created an educational video game called, The Plastic Pipeline. The Plastic Pipeline takes players through points on the ‘lifecycle’ of a single-use plastic product to empower them to learn about policies being used to fight it. You can access the game here: plasticpipeline.wilsoncenter.org