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By 2024, the United Nations treaty to end all plastic pollution is set to join multilateral forces to act on plastic pollution. While involving citizens has the potential to improve policy implementation, legitimacy, and relevance, effective measures are currently lacking in plastic pollution policy. Here, we aim to build on existing praxis in the European Union and analyze current initiatives engaging citizens. We discuss these in a citizen science context and provide recommendations for an effective treaty. We find that current measures are inadequate, that policy impact is contingent on the policy phases and the input type, and we highlight opportunities for citizen science to support public access to policy influence. We recommend that the upcoming treaty ensures access throughout the policy process, that inputs are systematized and harmonized to increase application and policy uptake, and finally, consistent equity in participation for citizens affected by plastic pollution.

Plastic pollution is ubiquitous, and the presence of plastic particles available for human uptake is documented, for example, in air, foodstuffs, and drinking water. Meanwhile, researchers, organizations, and policy agencies call for large-scale analyses of plastic pollution exposure. Doing precisely this in neighboring research fields, we argue that citizen science (CS) can contribute to close knowledge gaps for human exposure. We reviewed the recent literature (2019-present) on the assessment of human exposure to plastic pollution using CS to document the state-of-the-art and only found a single study. We discuss the strength of citizen-generated evidence regarding the most prominent exposure routes, and we present an example of a future, large-scale CS project assessing plastic exposure via drinking water.