A Story by Randy Olson

Planet or Plastic | National Geographic Magazine

By 2050, oceans are expected to contain more plastics than fish by weight. River systems in China, Indonesia and the Philippines carry more than 80% of the plastic waste that ends up in the world’s oceans. Asia has 83% of it’s plastic waste mismanaged while the USA only has 2% of it’s plastic waste mismanaged. That means when most Americans take their plastic waste to the curb they never see it again. While in many parts of Asia and Africa, people live on top of a plastic waste layer. We’ve produced 8.3 billion metric tons of the stuff and 6.3 billion metric tons resides in landfills. Only 9% of plastic waste is ever recycled into something else. The Zero Waste …

Planet or Plastic | National Geographic Magazine

By Randy Olson

By 2050, oceans are expected to contain more plastics than fish by weight. River systems in China, Indonesia and the Philippines carry more than 80% of the plastic waste that ends up in the world’s oceans. Asia has 83% of it’s plastic waste mismanaged while the USA only has 2% of it’s plastic waste mismanaged. That means when most Americans take their plastic waste to the curb they never see it again. While in many parts of Asia and Africa, people live on top of a plastic waste layer. We’ve produced 8.3 billion metric tons of the stuff and 6.3 billion metric tons resides in landfills. Only 9% of plastic waste is ever recycled into something else. The Zero Waste movement has been around for 20 years and was starting to get traction around the world when the pandemic set in. If current consumption patterns and waste management practices do not improve, by 2050 there will be about 12 billion tons of plastic litter in landfills and scattered across the landscape.

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An underwater photo captures a piece of red plastic floating in Manila Bay. Over 500,000 tons of plastic trash wash out through this bay every year, contributing  to the 10 million metric tons of plastic seeps into the oceans annually, mostly from Asia.  The bay is one of the most polluted bodies of water in the world.
A mother a child work together sorting plastic in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where most of the informal plastic waste industry work occurs along the Buriganga River.  Noorjahan teaches her child Momo how to bail plastic waste after it has been washed in the river that flows into the Bay of Bengal.  Her  job is to take the wet plastic sheeting and spread it out to dry over the landscape. It hand labor–shaking water off each piece of plastic and turning it over until it is dry enough to be baled and taken to a transfer recycling station.
Workers at a balloon factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, dip boards with sticks into a mix of colorful polymers leaving them in the sun.  As they begin to dry, they are rolled up and the material forms the end of a blow-up balloon.   These are “home-made” and  artisanal, but still “single-use-plastic.”
Bottles move down the conveyer belt at Poland Spring where between 345 and 425 employees working at the Hollis, Maine site oversee an array of computers and the water bottle production line. The 838,000 square-foot facility is the largest bottled water plant in the world, turning out about 80 million cases of water every year. Some of the machines fill 1,200 bottles per minute.
Plastic that is sorted in the Dharavi Slums goes to China comes back as colorful artificial flowers in a market outside of Mumbai. This woman is shopping in the Dharavi slum through the rich array of colors for flowers for her wedding. The slum was founded in 1882 during the British colonial era, and grew in part because of an expulsion of factories and residents from the peninsular city centre by the colonial government, and from the migration of poor rural Indians into urban Mumbai. For this reason, Dharavi is currently a highly multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and diverse settlement. Dharavi has an active informal economy in which numerous household enterprises employ many of the slum residents leather, textiles and pottery products are among the goods made inside Dharavi. The total annual turnover has been estimated at over US$1 billion.
A woman works sorting while her daughter wades through a sea of plastic under the Buriganga Bridge in Dhaka, Bangladesh. This family is part of informal plastic waste industry and set up their operation working long hours to eke out of living looking for recyclable materials.  It may appear a chaotic, tangled heap but the workers make order finding like colors and types in the waste that is in the shadows of Burigonga Bridge Road that goes over a backwater to the Buriganga River.
Informal plastic waste worker makes his rounds in very early morning in Varanasi, India because the city temperatures rise in unbearable heat during the day. 
A plastic worker walks from her tent and begins her morning by finding a discarded piece of red material to add to her outfit. A dog watches her and birds fly over this city of garbage which is the Kalyan Dumping Ground in Thane district outside Mumbai. Most all the trash pickers were gathering plastic, a precious find for recycling.
Luzinterruptus is an anonymous art collective in Madrid that’s been making installation art with plastic waste all over the world. They started producing political and illegal art works and now, ironically, this installation is legit and paid for by City Hall in Madrid. They took the plastic trash from a town and placed it in the most beautiful areas of the city so everyone would contemplate on what they are doing with one-use-plastic. They put plastic trash in the fountains of Neptune and Cibeles in Centro Madrid.
Plastic waste in the Ganges River at Varanasi, India adds to sewage, animal and industrial waste and pesticides making it one of the planet’s most polluted rivers.
Trash pickers bring their plastic to Alexander Ocag Junkshop where Baseco Happy Land and Aroma earning 15 pesos a kilo for sorted clean plastic. Twenty-five percent of the waste of the Philippines is produced in Metro Manila.
Estero de Binondo stream in the Chinatown area of Manila is covered with itinerant homes. You can no longer see the stream in most areas because it is choked with plastic waste. The stream is actually on the left side of this photos.  These residents will be moved to Bulcan, a settlement in the north. Even though the Pasig was cleaned up with major effort, plastic still flows from these areas into that river which makes Philippines one of the top three countries that pollute the oceans with plastics. 
Estero de Binondo stream in the Chinatown area of Manila is covered with itinerant homes to the degree that the stream is no longer visible. It is choked with plastic waste. Hardly believable, the stream in this photo is on the left side of the frame. Itinerant residents will be relocated to Bulacan, a settlement in the north. Although the Pasig was cleaned up with major effort, plastic still flows from here into the river making the Philippines one of the top three countries the world a contributor to polluting the oceans with plastics. 
Children catch tiny fish in a stream that comes from Manila Bay, goes through a fish hatchery, and comes out a slightly cleaner before it flows back into the bay. This is one of the few places I could take underwater photographs because the hatchery filters the water. A lingering memory from this trip will be that all our garbage goes SOMEWHERE and in the Philippines it goes to the most marginalized areas to sort, de-label and pile up creating a hazard.
Ten Hectare beach at the north tip of Baseco slum area is covered with trash including used toothpaste tubes from the Pasig River and other sources. Trash is visible on all edges of Manila Bay but this area is particularly impacted. A stream that comes out of a fish hatchery is filtered, but then it flows back out into Manila Bay. The bay has very little visibility–somewhat the consistency of motor oil.  A lingering memory from this trip will be that all our garbage goes SOMEWHERE and in the Philippines it goes to the most marginalized areas to be sorted, de-labelled and piled up. In this culture plastic is money, and artisanal industries are located around the dumps and tourist areas where plastic trash comes out of casinos and hotels. Children push aside used toilet paper to find bits of plastic that net 5 pesos a kilo. Junk shops take it to plastic processors for around 22 pesos a kilo. It takes about 16 one liter Coke bottles to weigh one kilogram. The Philippines is the third largest contributor to ocean plastics with 500,000 tons a year.
The Baseco Slums in Manila is known as the Recycling and Plastic Waste Industry hub of the Philippines. Trucks loaded with plastic trucks on the right side of the frame are caught up in congestion in Manila traffic which ranks as some of the worst in the world.  Infrastructure problems, high population and accidents are some of the causes. 
Plastic wrap is applied as weight loss therapy in Kamchatka, Russia. 
Early morning in the Dharavi Slums of Mumbai, people walk along the train tracks that are lined with piles of trash. This area is the third largest slum in the world and one of India’s homes to plastic recycling. Garbage piles up and bags blow in, and pickers are drawn there to sort through it daily.  
Spending time at this Bangladesh recycling center made me realize that plastic waste and global warming were companion threats. People’s need for clean drinking water increases as temperatures rise. The size of this center in Dhaka is equivalent to three football fields. In the winter when I made this photograph, only one of the football fields was filled with plastic waste. In the summer when everyone drinks more bottled water because of the excessive heat in a Bangladesh summer, all three football fields are filled with plastic waste. The slough next to this informal factory is filled with the overburden that is either shoved away or is blown by the wind into the neighboring watershed.
Colorful bottles caps create piles of drying plastic  along a riverbank. Families wash shredded plastic for profit organizing it by color for recycling in Bangladesh’s informal plastic waste industry. Their hand labor is more accurate than highly industrialized recycling in the USA and the labor costs $2-$4 a day.  Blue bottle caps are sorted from red bottle caps and they are sorted from the green bottle caps. A huge overburden of plastic is thrown away landing in the river and washing out into the Bay of Bengal.
Informal plastic waste workers live on the banks of the Buriganga River in Bangladesh. They are squatting on the land while they sort plastic which is technically an illegal venture since they don’t pay taxes. Workers were hesitant to give much information fearing I might be surveying for the government. The Buriganga River flows into the Bay of Bengal.
Trash pickers in Bantar Gebang dumpsite outside Jakarta Indonesia work in one of the biggest landfills in the world. Security guards say 100 trash pickers that work around the tractors have died over the course of the dumps lifetime. There are thousands of trash pickers, and the only material they were scavenging was PLASTIC.
The first two products manufactured at Dow Texas Operations were magnesium and chlorine from seawater to aid the World War II effort. Seventy- five years later, Texas Operations’ 65+ production units are making thousands of products – most of them ending up in products that we use every day. In 2012 – Dow Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris announced Dow’s Freeport site had been chosen as the home for a new world-scale ethylene cracker. From Dow PR: Dow facilities in Texas produce BILLIONS of pounds of products each year that enhance the quality of life for people around the globe. Dow products serve virtually every consumer market ranging from food to building and construction and from health and medicine to transportation. These products are used in a variety of end-use products – office supplies, mouthwash, pharmaceuticals, computers, furniture, paints, carpet, garbage bags, cosmetics, chewing gum, lozenges, cleaning products and food.
Storm clouds build over plastic workers combing the Bantar Gebang dumpsite outside Jakarta, Indonesia. It is one of the biggest landfills, and security guards report that over 100 trash pickers have died working close to tractors while they were scavenging. The only material workers look for is plastic.