The river that once snaked through the village is now a large trash heap. Diaa Hadid/NPR hide caption
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Major retailers report sharp drops in sales of single-use plastic bags, after a fee was instituted in 2015. Henry Nicholls/Reuters hide caption
Millions of women lined up along a highway in Kerala to form a "women's wall" on New Year's Day. For participants, the goal is gender equality. AFP/Getty Images hide caption
Single-use plastic bags like these are going to be phased out by Kroger supermarkets. Rogelio V. Solis/AP hide caption
Mumbai's Juhu beach is strewn with trash at low tide during monsoon season. Floodwaters flush garbage out of the city and into the Arabian Sea. As tides ebb, beaches are blanketed in trash, much of it plastic. Lauren Frayer/NPR hide caption
Australian retail chains including Woolworths are removing single-use plastic bags from their stores. Jill Gralow/Reuters hide caption
Some 80 plastic bags extracted from within a whale are being laid out in Songkhla, Thailand, in this still image captured from video footage. Thailand's Department of Marine and Coastal Resources/Social Media/via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS hide caption
In Kibera, Kenya's biggest slum, plastic bags are found everywhere — on roofs, on walls and clogging drainage. The Kenyan government says an almost total ban on plastic bags will benefit the environment. Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images hide caption