A Vietnamese woman gathers shells in a coastal forest littered with plastic waste, stuck in branches after it was washed up by the rising tide, in Thanh Hoa province, about 150 kilometers south of Hanoi, Vietnam, on May 18, 2018. #

A wild elephant rummages through garbage dumped in the village of Digampathana in north-central Sri Lanka, on May 11, 2018. At this dump, a herd of wild elephants forages among the rubbish, swallowing dangerous scraps of plastic mixed with rotting food in what experts warn is an increasing problem for the revered animals. #

Volunteers collect largely plastic garbage along the coast of Manila Bay during the annual International Coastal Cleanup Day in Paranaque city, Philippines, on September 16, 2017. #

A black-footed albatross chick with plastics in its stomach lies dead on Midway Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands on November 2, 2014. The remote atoll is a delicate sanctuary for millions of seabirds. Midway sits amid a collection of human-made debris called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Along the paths of Midway, there are piles of feathers with rings of plastic in the middle—remnants of birds that died with the plastic in their guts. Each year the agency removes about 20 tons of plastic and debris that wash ashore from surrounding waters. #

Up to 80 plastic bags were extracted from inside a whale, as seen in this still image from a June 1, 2018, video made by Thailand's Department of Marine and Coastal Resources in Songkhla, Thailand. #

A billboard portrait of a man surfing a wave made of plastic bags and bottles, created to denounce ocean pollution, is pictured in Santiago, Chile, on the eve of World Environment Day, on June 4, 2018. #

Mounds of plastic waste piled up at a dumpsite in Jakarta, Indonesia, on May 31, 2018. Indonesia has been ranked the second biggest marine polluter in the world behind China, with reports showing that the country produces 187.2 million tons of plastic waste each year. Like many developing countries, Indonesia lacks the infrastructure to effectively manage their waste and the problem has become so severe that the nation's army has been called in to help clean up when its rivers and canals were clogged with dense masses of bottles, bags, and other plastic packaging. #

Garbage covers the beach days after an extended storm hit the shoreline of Zouq Mosbeh, north of Beirut, Lebanon, on January 22, 2018. Environmentalists say the winter storm pushed a wave of trash onto Lebanese shores, stirring outrage over a waste-management crisis that has choked the country since 2015. #

Workers sort disposable garbage from plastic recyclable resources on a conveyor belt at Ichikawa Kankyo Engineering recycle center in Narashino, Chiba Prefecture, on May 14, 2018. Tokyo's Katsushika city office brings some 10 tons of plastic recyclable resources to the recycle center daily. #

Litter, mostly plastic, lies on a beach tangled up with kelp, with Table Mountain in the background, close to the center of Cape Town, South Africa, on June 3, 2018. #

A bicycle is parked next to plastics and other garbage on a beach in Neo Faliro, southern Athens, Greece, on January 17, 2018. Greece has the European Union’s longest coastline, poor waste management, and a heavy consumption of single-use plastic that is littering the country’s seabed. To fight the problems, volunteer divers are working as underwater garbage collectors to clear debris—mostly plastic—that is littering the sea floor. #

A picture taken on June 2, 2018, in Kampala, Uganda, shows women cleaning plastic bags to be sold off to a factory that recycles them into plastic utensils such as basins, plates, and cups. #

A student dressed as a "plastic bag monster" poses inside the art installation A Bangkok Minute, made of plastic bags, during an event organized by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) at a department store in central Bangkok, Thailand, on June 5, 2018. #