No Time To Waste

The Institute for Development Studies reports that current trajectories point to increased illness and unnecessary deaths, further harm to livelihoods and greater destruction of our environment. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In this report we outline the roles and responsibilities of four groups we believe to be key to tackling the plastic pollution crisis:

• multinational consumer goods companies who drive the production of single-use plastic packaging, and currently do little to collect and sustainably manage the waste they have created

• developed country governments who have enabled and incentivised a ‘throwaway’ culture and whose response to the crisis in developing countries has so far been weak

• developing country governments whose citizens are the most severely impacted by the crisis

• citizens who can show that there is an overwhelming demand for change.