Cover image for The Problem With Plastic by Judith Enck with Adam Mahoney (2025) | The New Press
Beneath the tranquil surface of the water, a slow-moving crisis is unfolding—one that is quietly, yet relentlessly, reshaping life on Earth. Each year, millions of tons of plastic make their way into the oceans, hitching a ride from the land through streams and rivers. This plastic doesn’t disappear; instead, it shatters into smaller and smaller pieces, weaving itself into the food chains of marine life. As the consequences of our throwaway culture become too big to ignore, we’re left with a daunting question: How do we turn the tide?
The Sargasso Sea, floating freely within the Atlantic Ocean’s circular oceanic surface current, is the world’s only sea without shores—a strange, boundaryless oasis named after the thick, golden-brown sargassum seaweed that drifts within its currents. This seaweed has long been a refuge, offering young sea turtles and hundreds of other marine species a place to feed, grow, and hide from predators. But these days, sargassum is more than just a habitat; it’s also a resting place for countless pieces of human detritus, a bizarre and unsettling mix of shampoo bottles, fishing nets, and plastic bags woven into the seaweed’s fronds.
We’ve known since 1972 that plastic had infiltrated the boundless region, but it wasn’t until 1986—fourteen years later—that the situation floated to the top of the scientific community’s to-do list, prompting the launch of a comprehensive twenty-five-year-long data collection project on ocean pollution. Trapped in the sea’s endless swirl, waste from across the Atlantic makes its slow journey to the Sargasso Sea, where it breaks apart into smaller pieces and eventually microplastics, embedding itself in the gills and stomachs of sea life. This oval-shaped body of water, roughly six hundred miles wide and two thousand miles long, is a place few humans ever see firsthand—and yet humanity’s footprint is unmistakably there. Nowadays, there’s no questioning how the burden of plastic waste has touched all our waters. The “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” was discovered just ten years after Sargasso’s contamination, and another ten years after that, the Los Angeles Times published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series on the crisis in the world’s oceans.
Dr. Linda Davies, who spent seven months working on analyzing 5,322 individual pieces of waste from an Australian beach, summarized our predicament succinctly. In 2023, she told Mirage News that her research demonstrated that most of the waste “washing around in our oceans has actually been there for an extended period of time.” Decades even. It’s why, she said, “even if we were to ban all plastics overnight, our beaches and waterways would continue to be blighted by this problem for years to come.”
How Big Is This Problem?
Over 171 trillion pieces of plastic are estimated to be in our oceans. It’s an impossible amount for our minds to comprehend, but try this. On average, two garbage trucks of plastic enter our oceans every single minute. That’s 33 billion pounds or 15 million metric tons of plastic every year. Plastic now makes up about 80 percent of all marine debris, from the big, obvious stuff like bottles and bags to the tiny, barely visible fragments of microplastics. These bits, smaller than a grain of sand, float or sink depending on the currents. Roughly 70 percent of our plastic waste settles into the ocean floor, while the rest gathers in the infamous gyres used in antilittering campaigns. The rest end up on our shores, a reminder that the trash we toss away doesn’t just disappear—it finds its way back to us, one wave at a time.
This waste doesn’t just pollute the waters; it also changes the very landscape of our oceans, hiding some of their most crucial and fragile ecosystems under a blanket of debris. The vast amount of plastic waste in the oceans also works to obscure these underwater sites, making it difficult for researchers to locate and infiltrate them to study them and conduct accurate radiocarbon analyses. It has also disrupted our ability to collect and memorialize the histories of those who’ve perished at sea.
In 2022, the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., launched the Slave Wrecks Project, an international network of researchers, archaeologists, divers, and community storytellers studying the history of sunken slave ships as a way to map out the transatlantic slave trade. Partners span from Senegal, where trainees dive off the coast of Gorée Island, the central hub of slave trading on the African coast, to Brazil and Cuba.
Many artifacts from the transatlantic slave trade, such as shipwrecks and other submerged cultural resources, lie on the ocean floor. Researchers are finding that plastic pollution is working to slowly damage these sites and disrupt the archaeology work being done. Microplastics and other debris can disrupt the sediment layers, which are crucial for preserving these historical artifacts. It’s a result that shows how the past continues to manifest in the present and even the future. As Barbara Christian, a Black American writer, puts it, the ocean tells us the story of our world and how the empires and nations that ravaged the globe have succeeded in their harm.
Today, it’s evident how the crisis driving migrants from Africa’s coasts to Europe and the Caribbean—often driven out of their homelands by climate disasters—collides with our plastic-heavy world. Tragically, the Mediterranean Sea remains a grave for the more than thirty thousand migrants who have died at sea over the past decade, along with the plastic life jackets, deflated boats, wrappers, and bottles lost in the waves with them.
Where Is It All Coming From?
In 1989, dumping waste directly into the ocean from ships was made illegal under Annex V of the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL). And while it’s true that dumping does continue today, it is understood to be minimal in comparison to land-based sources.
Plastic-producing corporations have also tried to point the finger at fishing gear left in the ocean by commercial or recreational fishers. Although fishing gear is definitely a problem, it is a small percentage of marine debris. Estimates vary, but it’s thought that 10 percent of all marine debris is made up of derelict fishing gear, while land-based sources like plastics and packaging materials largely make up the rest.
The effort to reduce derelict fishing gear, or ghost gear, has increased with tracking technologies, recovery strategies, and even international agreements. It is important that these attempts continue to protect marine ecosystems. However, as mentioned previously, the largest contributor is land-based sources, which create 80 percent of marine plastic pollution. Land sources include street litter, stormwater runoff, industrial activities, agriculture, landfills, construction sites, public beaches, and illegal dumping.
Much of land-based plastic waste—1 million to 2.4 million tons—enters rivers from industrial, agricultural, and city sources and exits out to the ocean. It happens in towns both big and small, from the concrete river that cuts through Los Angeles, connecting the city to the Pacific Ocean and bringing dozens of different pollutants, including feces and oil, and tons of waste, to the Huron River in southeastern Michigan, known to hold disposable diapers, cigarettes, and water bottles that flush out into the Atlantic Ocean. Globally, over one thousand rivers transport enormous amounts of plastic debris, industrial waste, agricultural runoff, and other pollutants into the ocean, posing a significant threat to marine ecosystems.
Can’t We Just Scoop It Up?
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and surface marine pollution of ocean gyres are indicators of a much larger, and deeper, problem—one that we can’t simply scoop up. The majority of plastics in the ocean are those tiny microplastics we mentioned earlier, of which there are estimated to be 171 trillion pieces. For scale, that’s five hundred times more than the stars in our galaxy.
As if it couldn’t get any worse, not only are microplastics impossible to collect, but most of them aren’t even on the ocean’s surface. A mere 1 percent of microplastics stay on the surface of the ocean while the rest sinks to the ocean floor or is suspended in the water column between the surface and the floor. Although we don’t know how much is on the ocean floor, researchers found ten thousand times more microplastics there than on its surface. When scientists reviewed the thirty-year-old Deep-sea Debris Database, administered by the Global Oceanographic Data Centre, they found that the amount of plastic increased with the depth of documented dives. At 19,685 feet, half of the debris was plastic and mostly single-use. A plastic bag has even been found in the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of our world’s oceans at 36,000 feet deep. The ocean has become a deep landfill. Skimming the surface isn’t going to solve the problem.
What Is Plastic Pollution Doing to Marine Life?
Each year, plastic waste is responsible for the deaths of up to 1 million seabirds, 100,000 sea mammals and marine turtles, and untold numbers of fish. Although marine mammals may initially eat microplastics, digestion breaks them up into even smaller pieces known as nanoplastics, which can easily travel throughout their body and across the blood-brain barrier. The micro- or nanoplastics that are excreted into the water are potentially consumed by krill, plankton, and other primary consumers, with ongoing research citing morbidity and mortality concerns.
Sea Turtles
Microplastics have found their way into the bodies of every single sea turtle species in existence: leatherback, green turtle, hawksbill, loggerhead, olive ridley, kemp’s ridley, and flatback. Some of the most common types of plastic found in all seven species, regardless of their habitat, include polyethylene (such as milk jugs and plastic bags), polypropylene (like yogurt cups), polyester and polyamide (used for synthetic fibers, which make up a staggering 69 percent of all clothing), and polystyrene (foam cups and packing peanuts). The type and size of these plastics play a big role in whether they get lodged in a turtle’s digestive system or pass through, but the impact is clear: Turtles that die from plastic ingestion have significantly more plastic in their stomach than those that die from other causes.
Keep in mind that six of the seven sea turtle species are classified as threatened or endangered and are protected under the Endangered Species Act. And it’s not just the plastic they swallow that’s putting their future at risk. The very sand they lay their eggs in is becoming warmer due to microplastic pollution, which affects egg incubation and hatchling success. For species that rely on precise temperatures for egg development, these warming sands are a silent threat. It’s a heartbreaking cycle: Microplastics are not only harming adult turtles but are also impacting the next generation before they even break through the shell.
Fish
When fish consume microplastics, it’s not just a harmless case of “bad digestion”—the effects ripple through their entire system. These tiny plastic fragments lodge in their bodies, causing damage that’s both immediate and far-reaching. For starters, microplastics wreak havoc on their aerobic systems, tissues, DNA, intestines, and even reproductive organs. Fish exposed to these particles often start to swim more sluggishly, grow at a slower rate, and show less of an appetite. It’s like trying to live your life with a constant stomachache or a clogged intestine. On top of this, their bodies experience inflammation and altered gene expression, with the plastic acting as a neurotoxin that disrupts their natural behaviors. In some cases, these impacts are severe enough to cause premature death.
A study from 2018 found that crustaceans exposed to microplastics had slower growth and reduced reproductive abilities. Interestingly, their offspring, who weren’t directly exposed to microplastics, also had lower reproductive rates, showing that the contamination can affect future generations. Similar research from James Cook University in Australia in 2020 revealed that microplastics cause behavioral changes in fish. The more the fish are exposed, the more likely they are to take risks and to die prematurely.
Seabirds
Every year, roughly a million seabirds meet a grim fate, choking on or entangling themselves in plastic debris that floats through their habitats. They might swoop down thinking they’ve found a tasty snack, only to get caught in a mess of fishing nets or gulp down fragments of plastic that will haunt their bodies for the rest of their lives. It’s a tragic sight—and one that’s becoming all too common.
In 2023, published by the Journal of Hazardous Materials, a study on flesh-footed shearwaters revealed that eating plastic can lead to a disease called plasticosis. When these birds consume plastic, it doesn’t just sit in their stomachs; it actually triggers chronic inflammation in their digestive tract. This inflammation scars and damages crucial tissues, deforming the lining of the stomach and impairing their ability to digest food and fight off infections. It’s a uniquely sinister effect; natural items these birds ingest don’t cause anything like this. But plastic? It’s effectively turning their insides against them.
Take the albatross, one of the ocean’s most iconic seabirds. These graceful creatures are meant to glide across vast stretches of sea, yet plastic pollution has taken a devastating toll on their populations, particularly their young. Nearly half of all albatross chicks die each year, primarily from dehydration or starvation. The culprit? Their stomachs are packed with plastic, which doesn’t just take up space but also actively blocks them from absorbing the nutrients they desperately need to survive. The primary reason was shown to be in the stomachs of these chicks, which contained twice the amount of plastic as those of chicks that died from other causes. Imagine a bird, still too young to fly, struggling with a belly full of plastic bits, unable to understand why the hunger won’t stop. For these albatross chicks, it’s a losing battle—one they never signed up for.
Whales
Whales, the giants of the ocean, are swallowing microplastics at a staggering rate—not directly from the water, but from the very creatures they feed on. A single blue whale, while filtering the ocean for food, ends up consuming about 10 million pieces of microplastic every single day. Humpback whales, depending on their diet, aren’t far behind. If they’re eating fish like herring and anchovies, they ingest around 200,000 pieces daily. But when they’re feeding on krill, that number jumps to over a million pieces. Fin whales, known for mixing it up between fish and krill, end up taking in anywhere from 3 million to 10 million pieces of plastic each day. It’s mind-boggling, and these numbers only get worse as water pollution increases. What’s even more alarming is that we don’t fully understand what this plastic buffet is doing to whales’ health. These are creatures that, historically, can live for over ninety years, slowly accumulating plastic bit by bit over the course of their long lives. Are these microplastics impacting their digestion, weakening their immune system, or affecting their reproduction? Scientists are still trying to piece it all together, but with this level of exposure, it’s hard to imagine there won’t be serious consequences. For now, these whales are left to swim through an ocean filled with our waste, their vast bodies taking in millions of invisible pollutants with every meal.
The World Wide Food Web
Humans are woven into the world’s food web at every level, and our appetite for seafood, in particular, is only growing. This is especially true in developing countries, where ocean-caught protein isn’t a dietary choice—it’s a necessity. It’s affordable, accessible, and steeped in cultural traditions. But there’s a catch (no pun intended), and you probably already know what it is: As our oceans fill with plastic, so too do the fish we depend on.
In 2021, a study on 555 fish species revealed that over two-thirds had ingested plastic, and nearly half of these species are the ones that end up on our plates. Among them are some of the ocean’s most valued species, like the blue shark, Atlantic bluefin tuna, and chinook salmon. It is a newer problem, one with impacts that we’re only beginning to fully grasp, as plastic ingestion in fish has doubled between 2010 and 2019.
For those who rely on seafood as a staple, especially in lower-income regions, this is a crisis in the making. If microplastics and even smaller nanoplastics are transferring into the fish tissue we consume, then our dinner plates may carry a health risk. It’s a double-edged sword: Not only does plastic pollution threaten human health, but it also threatens the livelihoods of millions who depend on the fishing industry for food and finances. As always, it’s the most vulnerable and least resourced communities who are hit hardest, bearing the brunt of a problem they had little part in creating.
Don’t Forget About Freshwater
Whether it’s trash that’s left behind, plastic blown in by the wind, or runoff from nearby land, bits of plastic find their way into rivers, streams, and lakes. Once there, how far the plastic travels or if it sinks into the sediment depends on factors like the type of plastic, the speed of the water, wind patterns, and even the presence of plants. In tropical areas, mangroves, shrubs, and trees act like nets, catching plastic that might otherwise float away. But plastic embedded in the sediment doesn’t necessarily stay put. During flooding events, for example, heavy rains can dislodge microplastics and push them downstream. One study found that microplastic levels
in sediment dropped by 70 percent after a major flood—not because they disappeared, but because they were washed farther along.
Our lakes aren’t faring any better. In a 2024 study of Lake Erie, researchers found high concentrations of microplastics in both the water and sediment. The samples revealed an alarming mix of fragments, microbeads, and fibers, with concentrations surpassing those reported in other freshwater bodies worldwide. These microplastics come from a variety of sources: wastewater treatment plants, runoff from urban areas, and even the air we breathe. Pollutants are carried by rainfall and atmospheric particles, returning to the surface and contributing to the ever-growing pollution of our freshwater ecosystems.
And then there’s Lake Tahoe, California’s iconic, crystal-clear lake. Researchers found high levels of plastic debris from textiles and clothing, including polyester, polypropylene, and polyethylene. Astonishingly, Lake Tahoe was one of only three lakes worldwide—and the only one in the United States—where microplastic levels surpassed those found in the ocean. This revelation is a stark reminder that no body of water, no matter how remote or revered, is safe from the creeping reach of plastic pollution.
Small Pellets, Big Threats
Nurdle spills are another source of microplastic pollution and affect all bodies of water: lakes, rivers, and oceans. In 2016, an estimated 230,000 metric tons of nurdles entered the oceans annually and absorbed toxic pollutants once in the water.
Nurdles, or plastic pellets, are used as the raw material in the manufacture of new plastic packaging and products. They are often mistaken for fish eggs by seabirds and marine life that ingest them and suffer negative effects, including digestive blockage and toxic exposure. University of Toronto researchers found that after exposing larval fathead minnows to microplastics collected from Lake Ontario, the minnows developed nearly six times more deformities as compared to those exposed to pre-consumer microplastics. This suggests that microplastics absorb chemicals present in the water, leading to deformities in aquatic life.
In 2020 alone, an estimated 731 million nurdles were spilled into the Mississippi River; an unknown tonnage was spilled off South Africa’s coast; and 13 tons were spilled into the North Sea. There may be many more spills in the ocean, but we don’t know how many because plastic is not considered a hazardous material (as it should be), and international law doesn’t require shippers to report all containers lost at sea. This is just one, of many, concerning policy gaps.
From Sea to Dirty Soil
Plastic pollution doesn’t stop at our shorelines; it’s made its way into our soil too. Agricultural fields, the very places we grow our food, are now hot spots for microplastic contamination. How does all this plastic end up in the ground? Through sewage sludge, fertilizers, irrigation water, and agrochemicals. Another culprit is the heavy use of plastic mulch—sheets of low-density polyethylene (LDPE) spread over crops to hold in moisture and keep weeds at bay. Plastic mulch, greenhouse films, and other agricultural plastics eventually break up into tiny fragments, spreading microplastics directly into the soil. As Matt Simon points out in A Poison Like No Other, these plastic materials break apart and act as a secondary source of microplastic contamination. They’re settling into the heart of our farmland.
According to the Center for International Environmental Law, agricultural soils now store between four and twenty-eight times more microplastics than oceanic basins do. This has enormous implications for soil health. Add in other plastic-related chemicals used in agriculture, like vinyl chloride in PVC—which the International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies as a Group 1 carcinogen—and you’re looking at a risky mix of chemicals leaching into the ground. Plastic might help keep the crops moist and the pests away, but it’s not something you want to grow vegetables in. Additionally, sewage sludge and biosolids from wastewater treatment plants are significant contributors to microplastic contamination in soil. These are the solid organic matter byproducts recovered from the sewage treatment process and are often used as fertilizer.
Every year, the United States alone produces about 7 million pounds of “biosolids” (the polite word for human poop), with half of it spread over fields as fertilizer. With sludge comes a toxic cocktail of contaminants: microplastics (what comes in one way has to come out the other, after all), pharmaceuticals, hormones, heavy metals, and PFAS, which are known as “forever chemicals.” A study conducted by a University of New Hampshire research team and featured in the New England Water Environment Association Journal accessed PFAS and PPCPs in biosolids from water resource recovery facilities in New Hampshire and Vermont. The results showed twenty-nine out of thirty-nine wastewater biosolids contained PFAS beyond screening levels set by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. As Paula Mouser, an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of New Hampshire, points out, without proper management, these chemicals are redistributed across landfills, waterways, and even agricultural fields.
Despite wastewater treatment processes and the Clean Water Act requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to monitor toxic pollutants in sewage sludge and propose regulations to mitigate potential public and environmental health risks, the presence of microplastics in biosolids remains a significant concern. Nearly 700 million pounds of microplastics are spread onto North American fields each year, further embedding plastic pollution into our soil.
The repeated application of contaminated biosolids only deepens the problem, posing risks to the environment and public health alike. Microplastics don’t stay put in the soil; they can travel through runoff into nearby waterways, threatening both soil health and water quality. This intersection of soil and water contamination demands a comprehensive solution, from stricter regulations on biosolid use to sustainable farming practices and improved wastewater treatment—a full-scale effort to protect our fields, waterways, and, ultimately, our health.
Water, Water, Everywhere
The urgency of addressing PFAS contamination cannot be overstated in the fight for environmental justice, both at home and globally. In North Carolina, the situation has escalated to the point where the United Nations has deemed it a human rights violation. This is not a problem confined to a specific region; the pervasive nature of these “forever chemicals” has contributed to their being present in almost half of the country’s tap water.
A significant source of PFAS contamination is the production and disposal of plastics, as many PFAS are used in the production process to enhance performance and durability. Additionally, when plastic products break up in the environment, they can release PFAS into the soil and groundwater, further compounding the issue.
Several studies have shown nationwide that Black and Latino communities are most exposed to these chemicals, with more than 200 million Americans estimated to have them in their drinking water. In 2024, the Biden administration instituted the first ever federally mandated plan for the nation’s water systems to remove six of these synthetic chemicals that have been linked to several cancer types, decreased fertility in women, and developmental delays in children. The new rule mandated that water providers reduce PFAS to near-zero levels. Unfortunately, the Trump administration announced in May 2025 that it was rescinding and reconsidering the limits for four of these chemicals, and extending the deadline for compliance for two of the most common PFAS chemicals.
The dangers of PFAS are exacerbated by their origins; these chemicals were manufactured by companies like DuPont, originally developed to make products more slippery and resistant to heat and stains. As these substances persist in the environment and human body, their cumulative impact becomes increasingly alarming. In 2024, the United Nations Environment Assembly declared that American communities have reportedly been denied access to clean and safe water for decades, a clear human rights violation. “DuPont and Chemours have produced, marketed and profited from PFAS for decades, contributing to a global toxic contamination problem,” the experts concluded. Yet, even as the corporations “had information about the toxic impacts of PFAS on human health and drinking water, the companies continued to produce and discharge PFAS,” the assembly added.
It’s a fate that continues to be worsened by the federal government as agencies work against each other’s best interests. As the nation pushes to get rid of these harmful substances from water supplies, the U.S. military, which has contaminated water sources with PFAS all over the country, is working to escape liability. The military has been attempting to evade full responsibility for PFAS contamination by leveraging the 2024 Chevron Supreme Court ruling, which limits the authority of federal agencies to interpret ambiguous laws. This landmark decision established that courts should defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of statutes that they administer unless Congress has spoken clearly on the issue. By citing this ruling, the military argues that the EPA doesn’t have the authority to enforce specific PFAS cleanup regulations or hold the military fully accountable under existing environmental laws. It’s a legal strategy that shields the military—and anyone with the resources to take the federal government to court, such as Dow, DuPont, and the like—from cleaning up their mess. Instead, it shifts the burden onto local governments, taxpayers, and affected communities. It’s only slightly ironic that it is a federal government agency working to undermine the federal government’s ability to regulate polluters and keep us safe. Those in power that also rely on clean water for life still poison the rivers, forgetting they drink from the same stream they stain.
What’s a Thirsty Reader to Do?
After everything you’ve read so far about plastics and their chemicals in our water, you may think that water in a PET plastic bottle is safer than drinking from the tap. You’d be wrong. Although microplastics are assuredly in tap water, they’ve been found at a lesser rate than in bottled water, and can be further filtered out with home filtration systems.
A 2018 study showed 5.5 plastic particles per liter of tap water and 325 plastic particles per liter of bottled water. However, a more recent study in 2023 blew that number out of the water (excuse the pun), showing ten to one hundred times more plastic than the previous estimate. The reason for the leap is because researchers developed an imaging platform that was able to detect nanoplastics, which are so small they can’t be viewed under a microscope. Nanoplastics are thought to be more toxic because they are small enough to enter easily into the human body, including the bloodstream and organs.
Water pollution doesn’t just come from bottles and soil. Synthetic textiles, for example, shed microfibers with every wash. These microscopic fibers, made from polyester, nylon, and other plastics, slip off our clothes and make their way into the water supply. A single laundry load can release thousands of microfibers, and wastewater treatment plants aren’t equipped to filter all of them out. Therefore, these fibers end up in our rivers, lakes, and oceans, contaminating drinking water and adding to the global plastic crisis.
The problem doesn’t stop with microfibers. Tiny plastic particles from tire abrasion on roadways also seep into the water system. Once in the water, they’re there to stay, and as we know, marine life often mistakes these particles for food. Fish and other creatures ingest the microfibers and microbeads, unknowingly swallowing loads of toxins. This pollution doesn’t just disrupt aquatic ecosystems; it is yet another issue that guarantees that each sip and bite we take can carry traces of plastic.
The scale of plastic pollution in our oceans, lakes, and rivers is undeniable. No body of water remains untouched, and neither does the life within it. Yet despite overwhelming evidence of harm, plastic production continues to surge.
If the science is clear and the damage so severe, why hasn’t the crisis been meaningfully addressed? The answer lies in the industry’s playbook. Instead of curbing production, corporations have spent decades promoting false solutions—beach cleanups, personal responsibility campaigns, and so-called biodegradable plastics—while continuing to flood the world with more plastic than ever before. In the next chapter, we’ll unravel these false solutions, expose the lobbying tactics behind industry-backed policies, and examine how corporations are doubling down on distraction while shifting the blame onto us. If we want real change, we must look beyond the shallow fixes by doing more than just skimming plastic off the ocean’s surface.
Copyright © 2025 by Beyond Plastics. This excerpt originally appeared in The Problem with Plastic: How We Can Save Ourselves and Our Planet Before It’s Too Late, published by The New Press. Reprinted here with permission.
Click here to read Judith Enck’s conversation with Katya Wack on The Problem with Plastic and grassroots organizers, often women, who are fighting for regulatory change.
