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The rapid increase in plastics waste is worrying, but approaching sufficiency in a broader sense can tackle much more than plastic waste streams only, argues Sylvia Lorek.
When strategizing the design of sustainable polymers, the timescale must be an essential dimension, that is, even for bio-based and/or biodegradable plastics their resource utilization should not outpace resource regeneration, argues Eugene Chen.
Orchestrating a global transition to a sustainable world economy seems both urgent and surpassingly daunting. J.R. McNeill asks whether there is a workaround.