Let’s Consider A Couple Of Workable Solutions To The Plastic Crisis

Everyday beach walkers in my condo community scour the incoming tide and wrack line for litter. The amount of debris they pick up can depend on the direction of the current or a recent storm at sea. Tourist season, which runs from January through April in Florida, definitely increases human-made objects that wash up on the shore. It’s an ongoing battle to fight the plastic crisis — not just in our community but around the world.

All litter that washes up on shore has a detrimental effect on the environment, but plastic bags are most insidious. Inexpensive for vendors to purchase, lightweight, and ubiquitous, plastic bags catch upward wind drafts and float to trees, roadsides, and waterways. They threaten the lives of animals and birds that  mistakenly eat them or get entangled in them. Eventually, plastic bags become microplastics, which humans and other living creatures absorb.

Researchers have come up with a possible solution to plastic bag pollution, as well as a way to mitigate microplastics in the environment.

Reducing Reliance on Plastic Bags at Shopping Centers

A June 2025 study published in the journal, Science looked into the success rate when public policy solutions are implemented to attempt to mitigate the plastic crisis at the local level. Plastic bag bans and fees have emerged as popular policy solutions to address this problem — over 100 countries have already passed regulations to minimize plastic ban use. Larger questions about the plastic crisis are being debated by 175 countries are in talks to create the first global plastics treaty.

Not all policies work to reduce the plastic crisis, of course. Partial bans sometimes allow a different gauge plastic that’s more stable — so that they continue to be part of the problem. Or requiring consumers to purchase plastic bags only adds to the production-to-disposal dilemma.

In this day and age of AI, much of the summarized information is contributed by a large group of people, typically from the online community. The Science research study utilized crowdsourced citizen-science data from >45,000 shoreline cleanups in which each walkers had counted and categorized the items they found during their litter searches. That data allowed the researchers to control for the share of plastic bag litter in shoreline cleanups before and after each policy’s implementation as well as plastic bag litter trends from places that do not have a policy.

The findings demonstrated that plastic bags were much less frequently found in beach litter where communities had implemented plastic bag policies. In fact, plastic bag policies lead to a 25 to 47% decrease in plastic bags as a share of total items collected relative to areas without policies. This relative decrease also grows in magnitude over time after policy implementation.

Both full plastic bag bans and fees reduce plastic litter. Partial bans lead to the smallest and least precise effects. Policies at all geographic scales are effective, with state-level policies being the most robust. Bag policies yield similar effects along coasts and rivers. The researchers calculated there was likely 30 to 37% reduction in the presence of entangled animals in areas with plastic bag policies.

The findings show that plastic bag policies have been widely effective in limiting, but not eliminating, shoreline plastic bag debris in areas where it was previously prevalent. Next steps are to expand plastic bag bans to decrease plastic bag litter and potentially wildlife entanglement.

A Nature-Based Solution for Microplastics

Microplastic pollution has become pervasive across all kinds of habitats — aquatic, terrestrial, and atmospheric. These particles are closely linked to human activities and pose a real risk to human health. In coastal cities, the transport of microplastics involves an interplay among the ocean, inland areas, and urban environments. Because microplastics are transported in so many ways, human inhalation and consumption exposure is increasing every year.

Lots of research is being conducted to find solutions to mitigate microplastics as part of the bigger plastic crisis. The efficacy of surface runoff treatment facilities, such as bioretention ponds, vegetated swales, and constructed wetlands, has a high rate to capture microplastics horizontally.

And then there are urban rooftops. There is hardly another human-made surface that is such a strong receptor for both atmospheric wet and dry conditions. What if urban rooftops could be configured to intercept atmospheric pollutants? What would that solution be called? Oh, yeah — green rooftops.

Already green rooftops have shown to provide multiple environmental benefits, including air cleaning, stormwater retention, and runoff purification. These assists already reduce the burden on local water treatment facilities.

Another group of researchers was curious if, since roof areas take up 40–50% of urban impermeable areas, developing green roofs would be able to intercept microplastics under various rainfall conditions. By investigating the vertical transport mechanisms of atmospheric microplastic within green roof systems during wet deposition, their research wanted to enhance understanding of microplastic transport in urban environments and inform strategies to prevent the transfer of atmospheric microplastic pollution into aquatic ecosystems.

Laboratory-scaled green roofs were created from shallow plastic bins half a meter square and 85 millimeters deep with a filter to prevent soil from washing away. There was another layer of drainage material and soil added. Then the boxes were planted with Rhodiola rosea or Sedum lineare, two species commonly used on Shanghai green roofs, with stem heights of 10–20 cm and plantings at 50 mm spacing. All setups included a rainfall generator, a collector, and a green roof module

The results were quite hopeful.

Green roofs were more than capable of intercepting microplastics — at the rate of 97.5% efficiency for trapping microplastics from atmospheric deposition.

The research found that higher rainfall intensities slightly increased interception efficiency. That was because of enhanced moisture content and reduced hydraulic gradient, which meant that the driving force for stormwater and microplastic infiltration decreased. Most microplastics were retained in the planting soil layer (66–92%), with the overground part of vegetation contributing modestly. Fibers were more challenging to capture than fragments.

Final Thoughts about the Plastic Crisis and Solutions

The Plastic Pollution Coalition (PPC) says it best. They call for solutions to plastic pollution to take into account all stages of plastic’s existence, from production to use and disposal. Such solutions must include strong policies and regenerative strategies as well as buy-in from the business community. A necessary shift in societal values and culture must take place, so that individual behavior changes adapt to new ways of consuming without plastics.

To achieve the world we need, the PPC calls for plastic reduction solutions that are widely adopted and systemic — “fundamental to the way human societies operate. For solutions to succeed, they must be non-toxic, just, equitable, and accessible to all people, everywhere. We are building, and rebuilding, systems that embrace plastic-free principles: refill, regenerate, repair, share, reuse, and refuse single-use.”