ST. LOUIS — As plastic pollution soars — filling waterways, air, soil and living things with the material — some in St. Louis are joining efforts to confront the crisis through new approaches.
Experts hope the shifting strategies — which include harnessing crowd-sourced data to learn more about what kind of waste accumulates and where — could result in better policy interventions and ultimately help spark widespread reevaluation of who shoulders the burden of plastic waste. That means potentially pushing greater responsibility toward producers, instead of leaning on consumers to constantly clean up the mess as disposable, single-use plastic proliferates.
“We’re trying to figure out what’s ending up on the ground, so that we can prevent it,” said Jenna Jambeck, a University of Georgia engineering professor who researches plastic waste issues.
