Plastic is marketed as cheap, and at the checkout counter it usually is. But the price on a water bottle or a takeout container captures almost none of what plastic actually costs us. The real bill arrives later on coastlines, in public budgets, and in hospitals. Plastics cost the world trillions of dollars every year, and as the world’s appetite for plastic accelerates, so will the bill.

A Trillion-Dollar Health Crisis

One of the highest costs of plastics is on human health. A 2025 Lancet review estimated plastics’ annual health-related economic damage at more than $1.5 trillion, and that figure covers only 38 countries, about a third of the world’s population. The real global figure is much higher. 

Part of the reason is what plastic is actually made of. There are more than 16,000 chemicals found in plastics, including phthalates, PFAS, BPA, and flame retardants. 25% of these chemicals are found to be hazardous to human health or the environment, and researchers have found a range of serious conditions, including cancer, heart disease, reproductive problems, and neurotoxicity, linked to plastics.

For example, in 2015, BPA exposure to that single chemical was tied to an estimated 5.4 million cases of heart disease and roughly 346,000 strokes, and hundreds of thousands of deaths that year alone. Even making plastics causes harm before it reaches the store shelf. Manufacturing releases fine particle pollution linked to about 158,000 premature deaths and over $200 billion in health costs worldwide each year. In the U.S., three of the most common plastic-related chemicals are responsible for roughly $675 billion in health damages annually. 

The Planet is Footing the Bill, Too

The economic damage to the natural systems we depend on is equally sobering. If nothing is done to address plastic pollution, the global cumulative environmental cost between 2016 and 2040 will range from $13.7 trillion to $281.8 trillion. 

In the U.S., factoring in both health and environmental harm, the lifecycle of plastics from extraction to waste is estimated to cost $1.1 trillion a year. Extracting and refining fossil fuels release greenhouse gases that cause an estimated $6.4 billion to $15.9 billion in climate-related harm (including more severe storms, higher healthcare costs, and crop damage). On top of that, the air pollutants released during fracking and other extraction operations, which are linked to asthma, cancer, and premature death, add another $2.9 billion to $31.9 billion in human health impacts. 

The disease and mortality rate from plastics during the use phase in the U.S. is estimated to cost $410 billion to $930 billion annually due to exposure to toxic chemicals. Dumping trash in landfills, which absorbed 86% of U.S. plastic waste as of 2019, costs roughly $2.9 billion, and clearing plastic litter from roadsides, waterways, and public spaces runs another $9.8 to $13.3 billion. The damage reaches the ocean too, where plastic debris costs U.S. marine industries about $3 billion by deterring tourism, damaging shipping, and harming fisheries, while degrading marine ecosystem services such as fisheries productivity, biodiversity, and recreation by an estimated $1.4 billion to $112 billion.

The scale of the problem is tied directly to production. Between 1950 and 2019, global plastic output has exploded from 2 million metric tons to over 460 million metric tons, and is projected to reach over 1.2 billion metric tons by 2060. As of 2015, 60% of all plastics ever produced have been discarded, while 30% is still in use. Of all the plastic waste produced between 1950 and 2015, 79% accumulated in landfills or the natural environment, 12% was incinerated, and only 9% was recycled.

Who Pays?

Part of why plastic looks so cheap is that its true cost is quietly subsidized. In 2024, the world’s 15 largest plastic-producing countries provided the polymer industry with an estimated $43 billion in direct subsidies. On top of that, fossil fuels (the raw material for plastics) received $725 billion in direct subsidies, plus an additional $6.7 trillion in “implicit subsidies”, which include indirect healthcare costs, climate damage, and lost agricultural productivity. 

Those subsidies aren’t incidental. In the U.S., the oil and gas industry spent $149.8 million lobbying the U.S. government in 2025 alone. Subsidies are what keep virgin plastics cheaper than non-plastic alternatives in the first place, so imagine if that money was invested in sustainable alternatives. 

Cleaning up and managing global plastic waste would cost the world around $361 billion a year, and most of that burden falls on cities and taxpayers rather than manufacturers. In the U.S., plastic waste management is projected to cost $40 billion annually by 2040, with taxpayers covering around 92% of that bill. That payment is through municipal budgets, property taxes, and waste collection fees that pay for waste management systems.

It is a pattern that shows up again and again. The people making money off plastics and the people paying for its damage are rarely the same. Communities near refineries, petrochemical plants, and incinerators, and low-income communities and communities of color, are the most disproportionately impacted by the health and environmental fallout. At the same time, the plastic industry is valued at $678.98 billion as of 2025. 

The Cost of Inaction

Every year of delay compounds the bill. The economics are now unambiguous: plastic is not cheap. We are simply paying for it somewhere other than at the cash register, and right now, the cost decision is being made by those in power, not by those impacted.

To learn more about how you can avoid exposure to plastics, visit our End Plastics page.

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Climate finance is funding that supports projects and initiatives aimed at tackling climate change. For example, mitigation finance that supports slowing or stopping the rise in fossil fuel emissions — a primary driver of climate change — through mechanisms such as developing renewable energy infrastructure, supporting energy transition programs, and launching energy-efficient and public transportation projects. In 2023, mitigation finance comprised 94 percent of global climate financing.

Adaptation finance enables countries to respond to and manage the climate impacts they are already experiencing or expect to face — for example, strengthening infrastructure to withstand extreme weather, developing drought-tolerant crops, and improving access to climate information for better management of climate-related risks. 

Together, mitigation and adaptation finance are central to global climate action. Article 9 of the Paris Agreement, outlines the climate finance obligations of developed countries to support developing countries. It set out a $100 billion USD annual commitment that was tripled at last year’s COP. 

COP30, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC), will take place from November 6, 2025 to November 21, 2025 in Belém, Brazil. As world leaders, scientists, non-governmental organizations, and civil society gather in Belém, climate finance will be a central focus. The outcomes of these negotiations will determine whether the gap between climate ambition and climate action can be bridged — positioning COP30 as a defining moment for climate finance and global climate efforts. 

Climate Finance and COP29

Climate finance was a central focus of last year’s COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Held from November 11, 2024 to November 22, 2024, countries reached what was considered by some a breakthrough agreement on climate finance, establishing the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance. 

Under this agreement, countries committed to tripling Paris’ finance commitment of USD 100 billion annually to USD 300 billion annually by 2035. Additionally, countries committed to mobilizing investments from the public and private sectors to USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035. The New Collective Quantified Goal establishes the creation of the Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T, which will lay out how to scale up climate finance to developing countries to reach the ambitious goal of USD 1.3 trillion. It will be presented at this year’s COP30.

Climate finance negotiations at previous conferences have also been instrumental in the global effort to fund climate action. COP27 featured the establishment of the historic Loss and Damage Fund. COP28 concluded with a historic agreement to transition away from fossil fuels, triple renewable energy, and increase climate finance for the most vulnerable.

U.S. Withdrawal From Paris

As the world’s largest economy in 2024 by gross domestic product and the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases based on an estimate of emissions between 1751 and 2017, the U.S. has a significant responsibility to provide climate finance. Despite this, on January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed executive order “Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements,” withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and climate finance commitments. Under Article 28 of the Paris Agreement, the withdrawal will not take effect until January 27, 2026.

This withdrawal has profound implications for global climate finance. Under the Paris Agreement, 23 rich, developed countries — understood as Annex II countries and responsible for half of all historical carbon dioxide emissions — are obligated to provide climate finance to developing nations, including the United States. Under the Biden administration, the U.S. had significantly scaled up its climate financing — from USD 1.5 billion in fiscal year 2021 to over USD 11 billion in fiscal year 2024. This made the U.S. the largest bilateral provider of climate finance in the world. However, under President Trump’s recent executive order, much of the U.S.’s climate financing has been canceled or withdrawn — including its commitments to major international programs like the Green Climate Fund and Just Energy Transition Partnerships.

This creates a massive funding gap. The absence of American federal contributions makes climate finance goals significantly harder to achieve. The U.S. withdrawal will directly impact the poorest countries and erode international trust in the climate finance process. 

Breakthroughs in Belém?

With the U.S. funding gap looming over global climate efforts, the work at COP30 in Belém becomes even more crucial as countries push forward key initiatives.  

First, COP30 is set to launch the Tropical Forests Forever Facility. Spearheaded by Brazil, this proposal seeks to compensate countries for preserving their tropical forests. Second, Brazil is proposing the establishment of the Open Coalition for Carbon Market Integration, with the purpose of accelerating decarbonization and encouraging implementation of the Paris Agreement. This initiative works to align standards and connect existing carbon credit markets. 

Finally, Brazil is proposing an international framework that defines the criteria for classifying projects as ‘sustainable’. This mechanism would allow the sustainability of products and economic activities to be comparable across countries through a universal standard.

These initiatives represent critical steps in operationalizing the ambitious climate finance commitments made at COP29. However, these initiatives can only succeed with proper financing. The new roadmap will include how climate finance can be scaled to the USD 1.3 trillion goal by mobilizing funding from private investors and development banks, to address the gap created by the U.S. withdrawal.

The Road Ahead

Despite the U.S.’ withdrawal, the remaining countries are still committed towards achieving their climate goals. But at COP30, we need to see the focus shift decisively from pledges to implementation. The ambitious goals established at COP29 require engagement from all sectors and coordination between governments, multilateral institutions, and private investors. The U.S.’ withdrawal complicates but does not negate the objectives of climate finance — it simply makes the work ahead more challenging and the need for international cooperation more pressing.

At COP30, world leaders must demonstrate that climate finance is not dependent on any single nation, but rather reflects a collective understanding that addressing climate change serves everyone’s interests. The world’s most vulnerable communities are depending on outcomes that match the urgency of their circumstances.

EARTHDAY.ORG has a robust presence at COP30 this year, advocating for climate education around the world. Follow us on LinkedIn to stay up to date on our activities next week.

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On a warm, sunny day, a group of teenage girls stroll through the mall, shopping bags swinging by their sides and beaming with pride for every dollar spent on their newest fast fashion fads. Two years later, across the globe, a young girl from Kenya will find one of those items at a Mitumba market.   

Though they live in completely different worlds, both girls are connected by a single garment — a Brandy Melville tank top that becomes a microcosm of the global textile industry, exposing the deep contrasts between privilege and precarity, desire and discard.   

But how did this garment cycle across the globe and what are the economic ramifications of its journey?   

Fast fashion garments will only interest the consumer for a few seasons, if that. Since the mid-2000s, the average Global North shopper has come to consume twice as many garments as the average global consumer. This surge in fast fashion consumption has turned countries like Ghana into involuntary dumping grounds for discarded clothing.  

Each week, Ghana imports around 15 million garments of secondhand clothing, items locally referred to as obroni wawu or “dead white man’s clothes.” These garments are economic remnants of the vast overproduction of the fashion industry, shipped to the Global South under the guise of donation or reuse. But while some of these clothes are resold, many are too damaged to wear, contributing to overflowing landfills, strained local economies and disrupted domestic textile industries.  

A Double-Edged Sword  

Due to the declining quality of clothing, much of the apparel sent abroad ultimately ends up in landfills. This creates a harmful cycle. 

An estimated 85% of all clothing is either incinerated or discarded in landfills. Although consumers often donate clothing to thrift stores with good intentions, only about 15% of all garments are actually recycled – either sold wholesale on lower markets, downcycled, or exported. Estimates as high as 45% of donated clothing is sent to foreign countries, much of it ending up in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Once there, about 20-50% of garments will end up in open-air landfills, where they release gases and chemical leachates during decomposition, polluting the air, soil, and groundwater. These pollutants also pose serious health risks to nearby communities. To worsen matters, discarded clothing frequently clogs drainage systems, blocking water flow and exacerbating flooding — especially in subtropical and tropical regions that already face frequent flood events.  

Yet secondhand clothing (SHC) sectors still offer critical benefits. In developing countries, SHC provides affordable clothing and reduces the demand for locally produced garments, conserving water, energy, and other resources. In Kenya, for instance, 91.5% of households purchase and rely on secondhand clothing. This reuse contributes to circular economic practices, extending the life cycle of garments while limiting textile waste.  

The SHC import business is also an economic driver. In Kenya alone, the business generates around $107 million annually in tax revenue. A study by Humana People to People showed that each ton of second-hand imported clothing sustains approximately 6.5 jobs, and in Kenya 2,000,000 citizens are involved in 2nd hand trade.  

While there are some benefits, a full assessment reveals a harsh reality — one marked by a default on development, rising health risks, and environmental neglect, all of which define the future of global stability.  

Cha-Ching?  

While SHC imports may generate some employment, this work is often less valuable than the opportunities lost through the collapse of domestic textile industries. In 1980, Kenya’s textile sector employed around 500,000 people. Today, that number has fallen to just over 20,000, largely due to the overwhelming influx of imported second hand clothing that makes it nearly impossible for local manufactures to compete. 

As these clothes continue to flood in, efforts to build domestic textile industries are undermined. Countries that accept SHC are left with weakened industrial capacity, limited development of human skills, and a global identity as mere dumping grounds for the Global North’s castoffs.  

In 2018, East African nations attempted to shift away from dependence on imports by focusing on local manufacturing. Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, and Burundi increased import tariffs on secondhand clothing to stimulate domestic production. However, this move was met with retaliation from the United States. The Office of the U.S Trade Representative threatened to remove four of the six countries from the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a trade agreement intended to promote trade and economic growth across the continent. Under this pressure, all but Rwanda backed down. Rwanda held firm on the ban, prioritizing long-term economic sovereignty over short-term trade benefits.  

Sick in Style   

Of all the clothing sent from the Global North, only about 1 in 3 pieces are actually usable. In Kenya 2021, about 458 million used clothing items were immediate waste, and 307 million of these garments were made from plastic-based fibers. The waste is known to overflow into the Nairobi River – often from nearby landfills or markets.

In other cases it is either burned in landfills or used as fuel in local markets. In Cambodia, textile waste is used as a fuel to fire kilns in brick factories. As with all locations where textile waste is burned, this toxic practice releases toxic fumes into the atmosphere leading to dire health consequences. The result? People, and especially children, are plagued with many health issues such as asthma, skin infections, diarrhea, lung infections, and cardiovascular disease.

The large proportion of organic textile waste, combined with ideal conditions for anaerobic decomposition leads to significant methane generation, and thus spontaneous fires. Meanwhile, 69% of SHC clothing consists of synthetic textiles. These do not biodegrade in landfills and when they are incinerated, the emissions will contain many toxic elements that can lead to cancer, birth defects and lung diseases among other serious health problems. 

When clothing waste infiltrates fresh waters or oceans, they can affect livelihoods through their pollution. An example is Ghana’s Korle Lagoon, once a thriving freshwater ecosystem supporting a fishing industry and used for recreation, now ranks as one of the most polluted bodies of water on earth. The now blackened water, flows into the coastal water off Ghana where it affects the livelihood of the fishers who find textile waste clogged in their nets. Nearby communities are also affected, as the polluted water they rely on for drinking, bathing, irrigation, and livestock is polluted. 

Contaminated water sources are both environmental catastrophes and economic lifelines. Soil and water contamination from textile dumping contributes to soil degradation. The leached chemicals disrupt natural processes impairing soil fertility affecting plant life. Moreover, the microplastics shed from these materials during use and their persistence in landfills pose a long-term threat to soil health, altering its physical and chemical properties and impacting microbial communities. This can potentially reduce crop yields, destabilizing agricultural economies that entire communities depend on.

Clothing waste pollutes at the end of its life cycle, just as it does at the beginning. For example, Indonesia’s Citarum River, used by over 15 million people, hosts textile factories that discharge chemicals above international safety standards. These toxins have declined 60% of rice and fish yields, cutting off foundational revenue sources.  

In Lesotho and Tanzania, rivers once used for drinking, bathing, and irrigation are now toxic, with water pH levels as high as bleach. The result is a widespread decline in health and productivity, as communities face medical burdens and economic hardship from tainted ecosystems they can no longer rely on. 

What starts as a consumer choice in developed nations begins and ends as a crisis of health, hunger, and lost income in developing regions. 

Waste Fashion Colonialism  

Africa has become a dumping ground, one shaped largely by the economic gap between its population and wealthier industrialized nations. Even in textile waste, the imbalance is sharp: people with higher incomes generate, on average, 76% more clothing waste than those from lower-income communities. This reflects a center-periphery dynamic, a structure where developed nations (center) benefit from the less developed nations’ (periphery) resources, while limiting their development, keeping peripheral nations dependent and underdeveloped. This theory is seen through the Global North offloading its excess onto the Global South. 

In African countries, buying new clothes is a luxury that most people cannot afford. Yet the promise of Western fashion creates a trap, preventing a local textile industry while leading to the destruction of waterways, increasing health risks, and growing dependency, all in pursuit of access to “Western privilege”.  

Western Nations ship their used clothing to Africa even though the region lacks the infrastructure to handle the huge volume of waste. But in doing so, they avoid the environmental consequences and legal responsibilities of handling it at home, offloading not just clothes, but the pollution, toxins, and long-term damage that come with them.  

There is a deeper meaning behind the economics of global waste —  one that reflects the unhealthy relationship between consumption and global well-being. At its core is a culture of disconnection: a lack of care for what sustains us — our environment, communities, and the labor behind our resources. The detachment from both the origins and consequences of our choices is unsustainable and the driver of the health and environmental crises we see today. The cycle of overconsumption, disregard, and displacement of waste clothing, creates a ripple effect that burdens the most vulnerable while protecting those most responsible.    

So, the next time you’re strolling the mall, ready to purchase a new skirt or top or dress, ask yourself: Is it really worth it? 

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