By contributing today, you support the vital research for The Story of Plastic. In coordination with the Break Free From Plastic movement, we're interviewing the changemakers around the world who know what it will take to solve our plastic pollution mess.

For our next movie, we’ll explore the global plastics system, and what it will take to close the loop. Changemakers, like Prigi Arisandi, pictured at top, who work in communities around the world already know what it will take to stop plastic pollution. Amplifying their stories and their voices is the core part of how we will show what it will take to fix this system.

Help us tell this story.

Plastic production and 'disposal' is becoming an increasingly large part of our take-make-waste Stuff problem. A recent study published by the AAAS found that only 9% of the plastics ever made (since the 1950's) have been recycled; the remainder have been buried, burned, or scattered across our cities, soils, beaches and ocean. Companies in the global north profit enormously from production of low-value and no-value plastics, much of it simply for packaging, that cannot be recycled. Increasingly, these companies are building large-scale production facilities to increase the pace of turning fossil fuel byproducts into plastic. This increased production cycle has a very real human cost.

The very people who are closest to where plastic ends up, in the global south, are the ones who have the ideas, the expertise and the commitment to solve this crisis. Individual leaders, community groups and NGOs are speaking with one voice to say, "We need to stop single-use plastic at the source." They are also scaling up solutions ranging from citizen science efforts to zero waste cities. The whole world needs to hear what these changemakers have to say.

Will you help us make this movie?

Your donation today gives us the resources to interview more people like Prigi Arisandi and Tiza Mafira. Their stories are vital to clarify the global plastic problem and paint a clear picture of the pathway to a cleaner, more sustainable world. Can you chip in today to support this critical research? 

Follow our research so far with the hashtag #journeytobreakfree.

Learn more about the global movement at breakfreefromplastic.org, follow the movement on social media via the hashtag #breakfreefromplastic.