In May 2018, National Geographic’s cover featured a giant plastic bag shaped like an iceberg, floating in an empty ocean. The headline bore the title of the organization’s plastic reduction campaign: “PLANET OR PLASTIC?”
Fast forward nearly six years. The official 2024 Earth Day theme is “Planet vs. Plastics.”
That similarity highlights the depressing fact that the world has made basically no progress on addressing plastic waste. One March 2023 study found that there were about 21,250 pieces of plastic in the ocean for every person on Earth. Those researchers also estimated that the amount has likely doubled in the years since the plastic iceberg magazine cover.
Both the National Geographic campaign and this year’s Earth Day theme have titles that focus on “the planet.” With ads tending to show trash-strewn coastlines and choking turtles, it’s easy to get the impression that plastic waste is a crisis happening far away.
It isn’t. Scientists have now found microplastics (and nanoplastics, which are even smaller) in people’s blood, hearts, lungs and brains. The tiny plastic pieces show up in placenta and in breast milk. Humans are eating, drinking and inhaling this stuff constantly, and it’s still unclear what that means for our health. Plastic pollution has already arrived in our bodies, and the slow process of scientific research cannot keep up with how fast the problem is growing.
“The planet” can’t change the rapidly increasing amount of plastic created on its surface. Only people can do that. The fight will require everything from writing to legislators to packing a metal fork with lunch to spending a few extra dollars on all-cotton sheets.
Regardless of how, it’s humans who will need to change—not oceans, coral reefs and turtles. So maybe this year’s Earth Day theme shouldn’t be “Planet vs. Plastics.” In the end, it’s actually about People vs. Plastics.