A key step, one expert says, is requiring companies that use packaging to play a lead role in its recycling and reuse.

Indeed, a recent study in the journal Science, authored by the researchers associated with the Pew report, estimated that some 11 million metric tons of plastic now find their way into the oceans each year — 3 million more than previous estimates. The study said that if the world continues on its current course of skyrocketing plastic consumption, the amount of plastic waste being produced will triple by 2040.

The only solution to this burgeoning problem, the Pew report concludes, is a massive $600 billion overhaul of the world's plastic system that reuses and recycles plastic in a circular economy, along with other, smaller-scale changes, including bioplastics. If its recommendations are adopted, the Pew report says, plastic waste could be reduced by 80 percent over the next two decades.

Among the remedies proposed in the report are the elimination of plastic packaging wherever possible, substituted with paper or compostable material; designing products for effective recycling; increasing mechanical recycling; scaling up collection and recycling efforts in moderate- and low-income countries, where the vast majority of ocean plastic originates; and an end to exports of waste plastic, which would force countries where the waste is generated to come up with solutions to the plastics problem.

Marian Chertow, an expert in industrial ecology at the Yale School of the Environment, says that a key step is taking the onus off governments for recycling and instead requiring companies that use the packaging to play a lead role in its recycling and reuse.

“It's called extended producer responsibility — product take-back,” says Chertow. Governments “should say, ‘We can't recycle all of this stuff. We can't pay for all the costs of recycling. We have to work with you, the producer.’”