People around the world are coming together to demand change. Many are altering how they shop, eat and live day to day. Millions of dollars are being invested in cleaning up plastic from our oceans and beaches. However, all this vital work will be in vain if ever more plastic continues to escape into our environment, be landfilled or burned. Equally, better recycling alone will not solve the issue: we cannot simply recycle or beach-clean our way out of the plastic pollution crisis. We must move upstream and tackle the flood at its source.