The world is facing an enormous trash problem . Even in countries like the United States, which has strong infrastructure for waste disposal and collection, the sheer scale of trash production presents a challenge. Poorer countries, where trash infrastructure is underdeveloped or nonexistent, cannot possibly keep up.

Plastic trash is a particularly thorny issue. Cheap to produce and tough to recycle, most consumer plastics like food packaging and shopping bags end up mixed in with other types of garbage. And, in many parts of the developing world, people have few choices but to dump their trash in waterways or burn it in open pits to get rid of it.

Plastic is burned at an alarming rate in low- and middle-income countries, according to a May 14 report by Tearfund, Fauna & Flora International, WasteAid and The Institute of Development Studies. Around the world, a double-decker busload of plastic is burned or dumped every second, the report found, equivalent to 70 million metric tons of burned or dumped plastic annually.