The words “plastic pollution” evoke images of discarded plastic bottles and bags, derelict fishing gear, and crushed cigarette butts set on a beautiful beach or floating underwater. In this imagery, the ebb and flow of plastic pollution is visible to the naked eye. But the plastic we can see is only part of the problem. What we do not see so easily are the microscopic, hair-like plastic fibers that are coursing through the water and air, accumulating on beaches, in intertidal zones, and even in Arctic sea ice. These are synthetic microfibers: thin pieces of plastic, a sub-category of microplastics, that resemble a strand of hair.

China is one of the “thirstiest” countries in the world with a per capita water availability a quarter of the United States. With population, pollution, and water shortages growing unabatedly, reclaimed water (e.g., treating wastewater to drinking water standards) could be the answer to China’s water insecurity. In China, extensive research in the 1980s into water reclamation and urban investments supporting infrastructure in the 2000s sparked production capacity in the country to rise from 63 billion gallons a day to 236 billion gallons per day between 2009 to 2015. Today, however, reclaimed water is a mere drop in the bucket meeting less than 1 percent of total urban water use. China could look to the tiny Southeast Asian city-state of Singapore to learn how it tapped reclaimed water to turn its water-scarce tiny island into a high-tech hydrohub. 

In 2017, the Green Volunteer League of Chongqing, an environmental NGO, filed a suit against China’s three biggest food delivery companies—Meituan, Baidu, and Ele.me—for damaging the environment by generating excessive waste. Specifically, these three e-commerce platforms provided consumers with single-use chopsticks that consumed 6,700 trees every day as well as massive amounts of plastic containers, bags, and utensils. Today, over 400 million Chinese are regular users of food delivery. Since summer 2019, daily app use for Meituan was over 30 million orders, generating 100 million plastic containers every day—enough to carpet 360 football fields.

In September 2018, the Jinghu District People’s Court in Wuhu, Anhui Province sentenced 12 people from the Pol Shin Fastener Company between four months and six years in prison for committing serious interprovincial environmental crimes in Jiangsu and Anhui in 2016 and 2017. The court also fined the automobile hardware manufacturer 10 million yuan ($1.48 million). The crime? Dispatching ships and trucks to illegally dump 2500+ metric tons of highly acidic pickling sludge from steel production. Sludge—semi-solid waste emissions from industries and municipal water treatment plants—is yet another tough water and solid waste pollution challenge China faces.

Wilson Center Director, President, and CEO Jane Harman and WWF President and CEO Carter Roberts put their weight behind growing momentum to ensure water stays on the radar for U.S. foreign policymakers in one of last month’s most-read stories.

John Oldfield called it: last month’s most popular story was once again on the U.S. Global Water Strategy. The Wilson Center’s Sherri Goodman, Ruth Greenspan Bell, and Nausheen Iqbal, like Oldfield before them, urged the new administration to take seriously the development of the strategy, due later this year, and provide “stronger American leadership” on global water issues.

The first U.S. Global Water Strategy is due in October, and despite a tumultuous start to the year, the U.S. government shouldn’t let this opportunity to demonstrate global leadership pass, says John Oldfield in last month’s most popular story.

According to their recent Safeguarding the World’s Water report, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) invested $499,995,179 in water-related programming in 54 countries in 2015.