Democratizing Plastic Governance Through Effective Engagement of Grassroots Communities

Plastic pollution represents a systemic governance failure with disproportionate social, environmental, and health impacts on grassroots communities, particularly in low- and middle-income contexts. Conventional top-down regulatory and technological responses have proven insufficient to address the complexity of plastic pollution, often excluding those most affected from decision-making and solution design. This paper examines how democratizing plastic governance through effective engagement of grassroots communities can generate equitable, effective, and scalable responses to plastic pollution. Drawing on empirical evidence from the #RestorationX10000 initiative led by Community Action Against Plastic Waste (CAPws), the paper documents implementation processes and outcomes achieved between 2021 and 2025 across 71 impacted communities in 21 countries spanning Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. The initiative was designed to empower 10,000 youths and women as community leaders, practitioners, and advocates by equipping them with leadership, technical, and policy engagement skills to drive systemic change in plastic governance and circular economy practice. Using a transdisciplinary, community-based action research approach, the initiative integrates capacity building, citizen science, circular economy interventions (collection, sorting, repair, reuse, repurposing, and recycling), and policy advocacy. Quantitative and qualitative evidence demonstrates that grassroots-led interventions can simultaneously reduce plastic leakage, create decent green livelihoods, and strengthen environmental governance. Overall, this paper contributes to emerging scholarship on inclusive environmental governance by providing evidence that democratized plastic governance, rooted in grassroots participation and circular economy principles, can deliver durable environmental restoration, socio-economic resilience, and policy-relevant outcomes. The results have direct implications for national plastic action plans, extended producer responsibility frameworks, and ongoing global negotiations toward a legally binding instrument on plastic pollution.