Plastic heterogeneously affects social systems – notably human health and local and global economies. Here we discuss illustrative examples of the benefits and burdens of stage on the plastic lifecycle (e.g., macroplastic production, consumption, recycling). We discover the benefits to communities and stakeholders are principally economic, whereas burdens fall largely on human health. Furthermore, the economic benefits of plastic hardly ever applied to relief or mitigate the health burdens it creates, amplifying the disconnect between who benefits and who is burdened. Within a instances, social enterprises in low-wealth areas collect and recycle waste, creating a market for upcycled goods. While such endeavors generate local socioeconomic benefits, they perpetuate a status quo where by the burden of responsibility for waste management falls on downstream communities, associated with on producers who have generated far greater economic benefits. While the traditional cost-benefit analyses that inform decision-making disproportionately weigh economic benefits over the indirect, and they sometimes unquantifiable, costs of health burdens, we stress the need to include the health burdens of plastic to all impacted stakeholders across all plastic life stages in policy design. We therefore urge the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to take into account all available knowledge relating to the deleterious regarding plastic more than entire plastic lifecycle while drafting the upcoming international global plastic treaty.
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