Throughout my 25-year career as an orthopaedic surgeon and former team physician for the Los Angeles Chargers, I’ve counselled patients and athletes on how best to recover from injury and strengthen their bodies to achieve and maintain peak performance.

Whether their injuries were from being tackled in a game, skiing down a mountain, or falling off a skateboard, my approach has always been the same: to heal optimally, cutting back on the bad stuff is crucial.

One should eliminate or diminish harmful substances, chemicals, and indulgences. This expedites recovery, promotes longevity, and significantly improves overall health.

Whether it’s alcohol, refined sugar, or performance-enhancing drugs, gradually phasing them out, along with the support of physical therapy and regular medical check-ins, will help you recover. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle can help reduce the risk of future injuries.

Environmental plastics

As a surgeon, my career has focused on people; however, my passion and duty extend beyond that. There is one patient in particular that I’m extremely concerned about—the planet and its inhabitants. As an avid SCUBA diver, I have witnessed firsthand the staggering amount of plastic pollution in our environment. I’ve seen it scattered on the beaches of Orange County, California, on the island of Komodo in Indonesia next to Komodo dragons and floating alongside fish in Tahiti and Fiji. As a skier, I have witnessed it in the mountains of Utah and Colorado.

My commitment to “first do no harm” and my commitment to future generations means I cannot simply stand by and watch. The planet is struggling under the weight of plastic pollution; by 2030, it is expected to double. Meanwhile, roughly a million metric tons of virgin plastic is produced daily.

Micro- and nanoplastics have been found in our water, our wildlife, and the air we breathe. They have also been identified in soils and vegetables, with us ingesting them with every breath and sip. They are entering our bodies, our bloodstream, our brains, and the placentas of women whose babies have yet to enter the world. Plastics have been found in fish, and no doubt will be in virtually every living organism in the ocean. This is a global problem that demands a global solution, and we can’t afford to wait.

A move by the United Nations

In November, representatives from over 170 U.N. member states will meet in Busan, South Korea, for the fifth and last meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) to agree on a Global Plastics Treaty, a U.N. member initiative launched in 2022. If the negotiators were my patients, I would offer the same measured advice: To improve our health, we first have to cut back on the bad stuff by phasing out harmful substances, chemicals, and indulgences. This will expedite recovery and promote longevity for inhabitants of planet Earth. 

By phasing out plastics harmful to human/animal health and/or particularly prone to becoming pollution, we can reduce the amount of plastic entering the environment at the source. This includes many single-use plastics, which are indulgences in the truest form, enabling us to trade conservation for convenience. This also includes the phasing out of “chemicals of concern” like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Compliance with these policies paves the way for the adoption of more sustainable alternative materials and fosters the introduction of innovative packaging solutions.

Unfortunately, in all cases, advice from your doctor is simply that. As the patient, you must display not only commitment but also compliance to see improvement. Thus far, we’ve seen that governments have been incapable of coming together to follow the doctor’s orders, or in this case, the scientists’ orders. Current voluntary, fragmented, and nonspecific policies that are determined by individual governments are not enough and make it difficult for businesses to comply across global supply chains and nearly impossible to implement at scale.

For example, most efforts to curb plastic pollution in meaningful ways in the U.S. have been implemented at the state level, with my home state of California leading the charge and a smattering of other states following suit with a myriad of differing policies from what can be recycled, to bag bans, to composting mandates. However, this August, the Biden administration released a new U.S. strategy to reduce plastic pollution, covering plastic production, product design, waste generation, waste management, and remediation, marking the first time the U.S. government plans to approach plastic pollution at the federal level.

Address the plastic product lifecycle

While we should welcome all efforts to tackle this growing crisis, it is increasingly clear that to have a chance at fixing the problem, we all must work collaboratively and to play by the same global rules. The recent Paris Olympics demonstrated that countries can successfully compete under the same regulations. We need to apply this approach to governance by adopting a binding treaty that addresses the entire lifecycle of plastic products (with agreed-upon metrics supported by science that encompasses the entire life of plastics) and is supported by harmonized regulation. Furthermore, the goals must be realistic and achievable within a meaningful/short time frame. This will allow and foster new ideas and innovations.

Similar to regular medical checkups, we also need a reliable system to monitor the progress and the effectiveness of our plan and improve it where needed. Regular assessments encourage international collaboration and allow countries to exchange successful strategies as we collectively transition toward a circular economy. This has been proven successful in greenhouse gas measurement and self-reporting frameworks.

As a medical practitioner, I join my colleagues in the scientific community alongside the World Wildlife Fund, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and the 230+ members of the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty in prescribing a treatment plan. The treaty must have a set of global rules that include restrictions and phaseouts of problematic plastics, introduce Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), and establish effective waste management strategies.

I firmly believe this will expedite our recovery, promote longevity, and significantly improve our overall (global) health. As stewards of global health, I believe we have a duty to all living animals and future generations. It’s time to take meaningful action. It’s time to follow the doctor’s orders.

Russell Petrie, MD is cofounder and chief innovation officer at Okeanos.