There are many regional, national, and international strategies aimed at preventing and mitigating plastic pollution, and while none are specific to microplastics, each of them is designed to reduce microplastics pollution. Unfortunately, none have a level of commitment that scales with the global magnitude and accelerating growth of the problem.

A major issue is that many of these do not have a binding commitment to reach goals and do not have strict mechanisms for enforcement. Not all countries are signatories and many times some aspects are outdated. Policies are cumbersome and slow to be effective and require funding.

Also, these conventions focus only on the marine environment, missing the large amount of pollution which comes from land and freshwater systems. To date, these have been ineffective in regulating, monitoring, reducing or stopping microplastic pollution.