Jessica Nabongo has visited every country on earth, and one of the most important lessons she took home with her was about plastic pollution.

In October, the 35-year-old Ugandan-American travel blogger and former consultant for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization completed her goal of seeing all 193 U.N. member states, plus the two nonmember states and a handful of territories. Her extensive travels revealed many things, not least the challenges inherent in navigating so many countries as a woman color. Few black women are known to have visited every country as Nabongo has.

Yet, what was most starkly apparent to her as she relentlessly crossed borders, hopped flights and checked into hotels in pursuit of her dream, was the omnipresence of single-use plastics.

Plastic water bottles, shopping bags and food packets littering gorgeous beaches, piled on the side of rural roads, and blocking urban drains. Nabongo witnessed plastic pollution and its consequences in just about every country, she told HuffPost.