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Every minute, every single day, the equivalent of a truckload of plastic enters our oceans. In the name of profit and convenience, corporations are literally choking (塞满) our planet with a substance that does not just “____” when we toss it into a bin. Since the 1950s, some 8.3bn tons of plastic have been produced worldwide, and to date, only 9% of that has been recycled. Our oceans bear the brunt (受主要冲击) of plastics epidemic—up to 12.7m tons of plastic end up in them every year.

Just over a decade ago, I launched the Story of Stuff to help shine a light on the ways we ____, use and dispose of the stuff in our lives. The Story of Stuff is inextricably (不可逃避的) linked to the story of plastics—the packaging that goes along with those endless ____. We buy a soda, sip it for a few minutes, and toss its ____ packaging “away”. We eat potato chips, finish them, and throw their packaging “away”.

The cycle is endless, and it happens countless times every single day. But here’s the ____—there is no “away”. As far as we try to toss a piece of plastic—whether it’s into a recycling bin or not—it does not disappear. Chances are, it ____ polluting our communities, oceans or waterways in some form.

For years, we’ve been ____ that the problem of plastic packaging can be solved through better individual action. We’re told that if we ____ recycle, we’re doing our part. We’re told that if we drink from a reusable bottle, we’re making enough of a ____. But the truth is that we cannot recycle our way out of this mess.

Recycling alone will never stop the flow of plastics into our oceans; we have to get to the ____ of the problem and slow down the production of all this plastic waste. Think about it: if your home was flooding because you had left the tap on, your first step wouldn’t be to start ____. You’d first cut the flooding off at its source—the tap. In many ways, our plastics problem is no different.

____, we need corporations—those like Coca-Cola, Unilever, Starbucks and Nestlé that continue to mass-produce throwaway plastic bottles, cups, and straws—to step up and show real ____ for the mess they’ve created. Drink companies produce over 500bn single-use plastic bottles annually; there is no way that we can recycle our way out of a problem of that scale.

Bag, cup and straw bans like those in Morocco, Iceland, Vancouver and some US cities are a great start, but also not enough. And while clean-up efforts are ____ in addressing litter problems, they can’t begin to touch the problems created by microplastics.

Not long ago, we existed in a world without throwaway plastic, and we can thrive that way again. The world’s largest corporations—with all their profits and innovation labs—are well ____ to help move us beyond single-use plastics. All over the world people are already innovating toward solutions that focus on reusing and reducing plastics. It’s time to accelerate this process and move beyond half measures and baby steps.