Americans throw away 35 billion plastic water bottles every year, and only 12 percent of these get recycled or downcycled. Metal cans, by contrast, are endlessly recyclable, becoming new cans over and over without deteriorating at all.

It’s no surprise to find a plastic candy wrapper frozen in an iceberg. You can’t watch trillions of bits of plastic, large and small, leave our communities globally and not expect the wind and waves to take it far and wide. The linear economy for plastics is failing people in remote communities and hampering the conservation of pristine places, but there’s a way out.

The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, co-authored by Senator Tom Udall and Representative Alan Lowenthal, is unprecedented legislation that seeks to meaningfully address the plastic pollution crisis by shifting responsibility for waste management and recycling to manufacturers and producers, setting up a national beverage container refund program, establishing minimum recycled content standards, as well as a phasing out certain single-use plastic products that aren’t recyclable. Additionally, this legislation will prohibit plastic waste from being exported to developing countries and place a temporary pause on new plastic facilities until the EPA updates and creates important environmental and health regulations on those facilities.