One of humanity’s largest looming existential threats is climate change. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, predictor of an all-encompassing virus that turned out to be Covid-19, now predicts what he says—based on the “overwhelming majority of scientists”—is a “looming climate disaster on a scale the world has never seen,” if not changed in the next 30 years, starting now (Cooper, 2021). Gates claims that diminishing, containing, and limiting—if not eliminating—warming greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, will require “innovations in every aspect of modern life—manufacturing, agriculture, transportation. . . .” In fact, it will require “changing everything in the economy” as we know it. Again, if this is not accomplished, the devastation to human life will make what has and is happening from Covid-19 appear small in scale. Anderson Cooper, the CBS commentator who interviewed Gates for 60 Minutes, asked Gates about one consequence of how climate change would affect migrations of people: “You’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people trying to move from North Africa to Europe every year?” Gates responded, “Exactly. The Syrian War was a 20th of what climate migration will look like. So, the deaths per year are way—10 times greater than—than what we’ve experienced in the pandemic” (Cooper, 2021). 

Gates currently has already invested $2 billion of his own fortune, with many more investments promised, in different industries to change the way products and services are conceived, manufactured, and distributed. He is also receiving contributions to his strategy implementation from several known billionaires. 

Plastics Dumping in Oceans, Part of the Larger Problem

What does plastic dumping in the oceans have to do with climate change? “In our oceans, which provide the largest natural carbon sink for greenhouse gases, plastic leaves a deadly legacy. . . . As our climate changes, the planet gets hotter, the plastic breaks down into more methane and ethylene, increasing the rate of climate change, and so perpetuating the cycle” (Duong, 2021).

The use of plastic ballooned with the globalized economy following WWII. Plastics provided the world’s economy with a cheap and durable alternative that could be mass-produced and utilized across almost all aspects of production, packaging, and consumption. Earthday.org provides the following statistics on plastic consumption: 480 billion plastic bottles were sold worldwide in 2016, one trillion single-use plastics are used annually, half a billion plastic straws are used every day, and the world uses 500 billion plastic cups every year (Earth Day Network, 2019). Unfortunately, our global addiction to plastic has created a worldwide crisis.

Moreover, “the world’s production of plastic pollution since the 1950s is about 8.3 million tons, with projections expected to reach 640 million tons by 2035. With a huge reliance on plastic for our daily lives, the worldwide production per year is 300 million tons. 50 percent of the plastic output is expressly for singleuse. The management of this colossal amount of plastic is not sufficient. Every year, approximately 8 million tons of plastic finds its way into our oceans, and 90 percent of the ocean’s trash is from plastic” (Gaytravel.com, 2020).

Plastic biodegradation “estimates range from 450 years to never” in dark and cold oceans (Parker, 2018). Our heavy reliance on plastics, along with an extremely long breakdown period, have resulted in large swaths of plastic accumulating in the ocean in garbage patches that have become increasingly publicized of late. A lack of understanding, control, legislation, and social responsibility have impacted all five levels of business ethics: individual, organizational, association, societal, and international.

Why and How Did This Become a Global Environmental Problem?

Plastics came to prominence in WWII and beyond. “World War II necessitated a great expansion of the plastics industry in the United States, as industrial proved as important to victory as military success. The need to preserve scarce natural resources made the production of synthetic alternatives a priority” (Science History Institute, 2016). The benefits and scale of plastic were put on full display in WWII and producers took notice, utilizing the new polymer to drive down costs and innovate new products. Plastics are highly flexible, extremely durable, easy to manufacture, could be totally synthetic, and are cheap to mass-produce. “In product after product, market after market, plastics challenged traditional materials and won, taking the place of steal in cars, paper and glass in packaging, and wood in furniture” (Science and History Institute, 2016). The ramp-up of plastic use in the United States accelerated “by lower manufacturing costs and elimination of Food and Drug Administration restrictions on the use of plastics in food packaging” (Conner and O’Dell, 1988, 17). The introduction of plastics in food packaging has also led to the single-use plastic issue we are experiencing today.

From the 1950s to now, “plastic became an increasingly common component of textiles, electronics, appliances, automobiles, tires, aeronautics, agricultural equipment, electrical wiring, building materials, consumer products, and packaging” (Dauvergne, 2018, 24). The scale and increasing plastic production and utilization have been exponential. The entire global economy has been propelled by plastic production and consumption, resulting in a disastrous pollution problem. 

Plastics have long been polluting the oceans, outpacing public awareness, but that is now changing. “Part of the explanation for this delayed realization relates to the distance and relative invisibility of marine plastic sinks in the center of ocean basins and on the sea floor” (Mendenhall, 2018, 291). “Poor management of waste on land was a significant source of plastic debris,” with the worst contributors of plastic by volume coming from coastal Asia, Africa, and the United States (Mendenhall, 2018, 292). One source identifies Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Burma, and North Korea as having the highest rates of mismanaged waste in the world (Tibbets, 2015, 92). Another source, the 2020 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plan that addressed marine litter, named five Asian nations—China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam—“as responsible for more than half of the plastic waste flowing into the oceans every year (Parker, 2020). U.S. and U.K. residents, however, “produce more plastic waste per person than any other nation, with Americans generating an average of 105kg (231lbs) of plastic per year. The British are close behind, throwing away almost 99kg (218lbs) annually” (Parker, 2020). Plastic pollution is becoming so pervasive that “by 2050 the ocean will contain more plastic by weight than fish” (Laville and Taylor, 2017). 

Plastic in the ocean is a problem that has several direct and indirect consequences. “Between 60–90 percent of marine litter is plastic, with over 9 million metric tons of plastic flowing into the oceans in 2015. The main source of this plastic pollution is litter from consumer packaging and products, a category that includes beverage bottles, shopping bags, bottle caps, food containers, straws, cigarettes butts, and cling wrap” (Dauvergne, 2018, 23). The first and most apparent is the destruction of marine life and habitats. Marine life can suffer from entanglement or ingestion of plastics. “Entanglement or ingestion can reduce the quality of life, survival chances, and reproductive viability of marine animals, or kill them through strangulation, suffocation, or starvation” (Mendenhall, 2018, 293). Additionally, plastics are destroying marine habitats by smothering them. Ocean plastic is accumulating in large garbage patches because of “Ekman transport, a current effect created by the complex interaction of the Earth’s rotation and wind patterns. Five such accumulation zones have been identified: two in the Atlantic, two in the Pacific, and one in the Indian Ocean” (Mendenhall, 2018, 292). Plastics will continue to accumulate in these garbage patches for the foreseeable future. Plastics are presenting an enormous issue, in the short and long term, for marine wildlife and habitats around the world. 

Plastic in the ocean is also having an impact on humans. In addition to becoming part of the global climate change impending disaster in 30 or fewer years, as stated earlier, a visible impact is coastal pollution that is becoming more apparent, affecting residents as well as country economies and livelihoods that depend on tourism. Additionally, humans are indirectly affected by the consumption of marine wildlife that is living in an increasing polluted world. The impact of plastic trickles up to humans by way of “trophic transfer, moving up the food chain through predator-prey relationships” (Mendenhall, 2018, 293). Trophic transfer is not a new phenomenon and historically has been used to explain the risk of mercury content and the risk associated with the consumption of fish. The application of trophic transfer to plastics is a relatively concept. “Scientists at Ghent University in Belgium recently calculated people who eat seafood ingest up to 11,000 tiny pieces of plastic every year” (Laville and Taylor, 2017). Unfortunately, little is known about the short- and long-term impacts of this type of plastic consumption. “We lack a full understanding of the total pollutant loads associated with chemical additives in plastics. In terms of animals who eat plastics, little is known about the degree and rate of absorption, and the effects of long-term exposure to these toxins” (Mendenhall, 2018, 293). The impact that plastic is having on humans presents a consumer protection rights issue as well. All consumers have “the right to a healthy environment: to live and work in an environment which is nonthreatening to the well-being or present and future generations” (Consumers International, 2011). And, again, the issue looming much larger is Gates’s and other notable scientists’ predictions that we have 30 years or less to contain and hopefully eliminate all forms of pollutants that add to the changing global climate crisis that will threaten all life as we know it on this planet. 

Stakeholders and Solution Paths

Leaders include stakeholders and stockholders, government and nongovernment officials, public and private companies, profit and nonprofit agencies, associations, and community groups and citizens: all who use, consume, and have a stake in the complete supply chain of plastics are involved in stopping plastic pollution— not only in the oceans, but in use everywhere. More specifically, “in 2019, 187 nations within the United Nations [UN Environment Program] amended the 1989 Basel Convention, which governs trade in hazardous materials, to include plastic waste. The historic treaty created a legally binding framework to make global trade in plastic waste more transparent and better regulated” (Duong, 2021). This amendment “will result in a cleaner ocean within five years and allow developing nations like Vietnam and Malaysia to refuse low-quality and difficult-to-recycle waste before it ever gets shipped” (Duong, 2021). Also, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)—an international nonprofit environmental organization “with more than 3 million members and online activists,” consisting of “lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists” who work “to protect the world’s natural resources, public health, and the environment” (www.nrdc.org)—is particularly focused on stopping pollution in the oceans. 

The National Geographic website lists global actions being taken to stop ocean pollution (Howard et al., 2019). Finally, a large part of this responsibility rests with individual citizens, including you and me. What is our “plastic footprint” now with regard to the use and disposal of plastics that could end up being dumped into an ocean? 

Questions for Discussion

1. What, if anything, did you learn from reading this case and the “Notes” section below that you didn’t know before?

2. What is/are the main issue(s) in the case, and who are the stakeholders?

3. How would you describe your “footprint” with regard to your habits in using any form of plastic?

4. How would you describe the relevance of “ethics” to the main points and takeaways from this case? (Refer to your learning from this book as well as your own thinking.)

5. Argue a position that using plastics is not as big a problem as the media and scientists claim, that it is probably no bigger a problem than the pollution that cruise ships, for example, create (https://foe.org/projects/cruise-ships/; https://daily.jstor.org/the-high-environmental-costs-of-cruise-ships/; http:// www.beachapedia.org/Cruise_Ship_Pollution).