Since its founding in 2019, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste has pursued a quiet but consequential ambition: to transform the way humanity accounts for the materials it discards. In 2025, the first full year of its Strategy 2030, the Alliance diverted 138,162 tonnes of plastic from unmanaged disposal and unlocked US$641 million in third-party investment commitments — not as endpoints, but as proof that systemic change in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa is possible. The deeper question the organization is now asking is whether isolated acts of rescue can be replaced by