The Problem with Plastic

How We Can Save Ourselves and Our Planet Before It’s Too Late

Judith Enck, Adam Mahoney, Beyond Plastics

• Publisher: The New Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781620979990
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

“Plastic pollution has reached crisis proportions, and false solutions abound. But as The Problem with Plastic shows, there are real solutions out there. And, fortunately, there are people like Judith Enck working to enact them.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction

A powerful look at plastic’s impact on human health and the environment, and how we can fight back by putting people and the planet over plastics

Plastic is everywhere—wrapped around our food, stitched into our clothes, even coursing through our veins. Once a marvel of modern science, plastic has become so inextricably woven into our lives that imagining a world without it can seem impossible. Over the last seventy-five years, plastic has cradled our planet in a synthetic embrace.

The Problem with Plastic critically examines the paradox of this material, first celebrated for its innovations and now recognized for its devastating environmental and public health impacts. With clarity and urgency, the book reveals how plastic pollution contributes to poisoned oceans, polluted air, a warming planet, and overwhelming waste, disproportionately impacting marginalized communities who bear the brunt of petrochemical pollution.

Revealing the alarming extent of microplastics infiltrating both the natural world and the human body, this compelling narrative challenges the illusion that recycling alone will save us. It unpacks the mechanisms of environmental racism and the deceptive greenwashing strategies used by the plastics industry to maintain the status quo.

More than a critique, The Problem with Plastic emphasizes the urgent need for action against plastic’s toxic legacy. It highlights powerful stories of frontline resistance in places like Louisiana, Texas, and Appalachia, and equips readers with practical tools—including a “Household Waste Audit” to track and reduce plastic consumption, as well as model policy guides for driving legislative change.

Urgent, eye-opening, and ultimately empowering, The Problem with Plastic reminds us: plastic is a problem—but together, we can be the solution.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction: Life in Plastic
• 1. A Brief History of Plastics
• 2. Poisoned by Plastic
• 3. The Emperor Has No Clothes
• 4. The Cost of Convenience
• 5. Beneath the Surface
• 6. The False Solutions
• 7. The Real Solutions
• 8. Cause for Hope
• 9. What You Can Do
• Conclusion: A Cleaner and Healthier Future
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Copyright Page