The impacts of plastics’ life cycle

Plastics are commonly synthetic polymers used by many industries because they are inexpensive, durable, moldable, and have a wide range of applications. However, plastics production, use, and waste are associated with numerous challenges, including unsustainable resource use, greenhouse gas emissions, toxic chemicals, and unprecedented environmental pollution. Here, we provide an overview of plastic production, use, and end of life, highlighting how this has become such a ubiquitous problem. Interventions need to happen along the entire life cycle of plastics to reduce the burdens on communities where plastics are produced, provide more choices to consumers who want to avoid plastics, reduce quantities that leak out into our environment, and reduce harm to wildlife and humans currently being impacted by plastics use and leakage into the environment.