A pile of plastic waste in Vietnam's northern Hung Yen province in November, 2025.NHAC NGUYEN/AFP/Getty Images

“There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?” is a memorable line from the classic 1967 movie The Graduate.

Almost six decades later, the admonition to think about plastics is more timely and urgent than ever. But not because of the business opportunity – instead, it’s because of the growing realization that plastics are having an adverse impact on our health.

“Plastics are a grave, growing, and under-recognized danger to human and planetary health,” a recently published study in The Lancet medical journal stated bluntly. “Plastics cause disease and death from infancy to old age and are responsible for health-related economic losses exceeding US$1.5-trillion annually.”

Think about it, indeed.

Failed plastics treaty talks leave no clear path to address growing pollution problem

Globally, more than 450 million tonnes of plastics are manufactured each year. Annual production has grown 400-fold since the Second World War, and is expected to hit a staggering 1.2 trillion tonnes

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