As consumer concern about plastic pollution grows, a third of adults in the United States say they have reduced their use of plastic products over the past five years.
That’s according to the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, which found that close to half of Americans (47 percent) said they had maintained their use of these items — like water bottles, razors or straws. Another 1 in 5 adults increased their use during this time period, which included years of a world-altering coronavirus pandemic.
Graphic by Jenna Cohen/PBS NewsHour
Discarded plastic, which is derived from fossil fuels, ends up in landfills or in the environment, where it takes decades if not centuries to break down. Leaders in the plastic industry have long emphasized the promise of recycling, but a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions of metric tons of plastic produced globally each year is recycled. That waste is sometimes exported from richer countries and dumped in poorer ones.
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In whatever nation it lands, plastic poses a particular threat to marine ecosystems and wildlife. The material never truly biodegrades, instead breaking down into increasingly tiny pieces over time. Researchers are still examining how these microplastics may affect human health.
Here’s a look at who is cutting back on plastics, according to the new poll, and why that’s hard to do at an individual level.
Who’s cutting back on plastic use?
In this latest poll, women, people in households making more than $50,000 annually, and college graduates were more likely to report a decrease in how often they used single-use plastics.
Chart by Jenna Cohen/PBS NewsHour
The poll revealed clear divisions along political lines, too. Democrats and independent voters reported more of a decrease in their use of single-use plastics over time compared to Republicans (40 percent and 34 percent, respectively, versus 19 percent). Women of all political affiliations reported a steeper decrease compared to men.
Pew Research Center found in 2019 that most Americans were attempting to use fewer disposable plastics to benefit the environment. However, Pew noted, “on a per-person basis, the amount of waste from disposable plastic consumer items has held steady over the past two decades.”
Past polls have also revealed a gender gap in attitudes over the threat posed by climate change. In another Pew survey from 2021, conducted across 17 nations, women were more likely to worry that climate change would harm them personally.
READ MORE: Most Americans would pay more to avoid using plastic, poll says
Women thinking more about environmental implications may actually be having a greater effect at a consumer level than is represented in this poll, suggested Kiersten Muenchinger, a product design professor at the University of Oregon.
“Women make a lot more choices of what to purchase for the household than men do and are paying much more attention to it,” Muenchinger said.
“If women are decreasing their use by 38 percent, the decrease in purchasing is probably proportionately greater,” she added.
For the 20 percent of U.S. adults who said their use of single-use plastics has increased over the past five years, the COVID-19 pandemic may have played a role.
An egret searches for food among trash collected in the Los Angeles River after floods. Plastic trash can harm wildlife like birds, fish, turtles and whales. Image via County of Los Angeles Department Public Works/Bob Riha, Jr.
The use of those types of products increased during that time, particularly in the earlier stages of the pandemic, in an effort to maximize public health precautions. People may have used more disposable masks or gloves in observance of public health precautions or purchased more single-use items in part because of initial fears that reusable products could help spread the virus.
Between various age groups, there was also a notable difference in how people reportedly approached single-use plastics over the past five years. While more than a third of adults aged 45 and older said their use decreased during that time, 27 percent of people under 45 said the same.
The future of plastic products
Despite the ecological burdens associated with mass plastic use and production, identifying viable solutions or alternatives isn’t an easy task. The question of which materials — like glass, steel or plastic — are the most technically sustainable option for various products is often nuanced. In many cases, plastic products are actually more sustainable than some alternatives when considering the emissions associated with their production, Muenchinger said.
Her analyses incorporate a wide range of factors, including the carbon footprint across the product’s life cycle, the electricity used at the factories where products are made, or the fuel trucks use to transport them to stores for consumers.
But in a world that’s phasing out — and running out of — petroleum, researchers are turning to plants as source materials to manufacture plastics, Muenchinger said, while also searching for more efficient ways to recycle them.
“The ability to make plastics out of a renewable resource is going to be necessary at some point in the future,” she said.
READ MORE: How this chemical engineer is hacking plastic production to promote sustainability
Efforts to transition to electric vehicles and generate more electricity using renewable sources could also augment the sustainability associated with manufacturing and distributing plastic products.
For consumers who want to stop using as much plastic in their day-to-day lives, focusing on where they can reduce their consumption and reuse existing products is a good place to start, said Breagin Riley, a University of Notre Dame assistant research professor of marketing.
“At the consumer level, it’s basically ferreting out where the plastics are in your life and shifting them,” she said, adding that people are limited by the product options available to them, in addition to their own financial resources.
But Riley emphasized that individual efforts have their limitations when it comes to solving major, systemic problems. That’s why collective action is equally crucial to catalyze large-scale changes that address these ecological challenges, including among companies that have an opportunity to proactively respond to consumer demands, she said.
The PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist Poll conducted a survey on March 25 through March 28 that polled 1,305 U.S. adults with a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points and 1,199 registered voters with a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.
