Plastics provide multiple benefits to society, but their lifecycle - from feedstock extraction and polymer production to use and disposal - contributes heavily to pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss. Current policies are inadequate to meaningfully alter trends in plastic flows and related pollution, but negotiations are underway to develop an international, legally-binding instrument on plastic pollution to drive more ambitious and co-ordinated policy action.
In light of the ongoing negotiations, this new report intends to offer insights on the potential effectiveness of alternative versions of an international treaty in terms of reducing and ending plastic pollution, as well as on the related implementation costs. This is a follow-up report to earlier publications “Global Plastics Outlook: Economic Drivers, Environmental Impacts and Policy Options” and “Global Plastics Outlook: Policy Scenarios to 2060”, both released in 2022. This new report focuses on policy scenarios characterised by more rapid reductions in plastic flows and plastic pollution, with a 2040 horizon.
The methodology employed in this report builds on the foundational methodological framework employed in the previous Global Plastics Outlook publications, to quantify the main mechanisms driving plastics production and use, waste and pollution. Using state-of-the-art environment-economy modelling, this report provides detailed sectoral and regional projections of the plastics lifecycle, including different polymers and applications, waste generation and treatment, as well as related leakage to aquatic and terrestrial environments.
Based on this, the report then presents and contrasts alternative policy scenarios with varying levels of policy ambition. In addition to a Baseline scenario, the report develops five policy scenarios that differ according to three dimensions: geographical coverage (global or Advanced economies only), lifecycle scope (broad coverage of policies along the lifecycle or downstream policies only), and policy stringency (high stringency, low stringency or current policy stringency). All scenarios contain ten policy instruments, grouped into four policy pillars: i) curb plastics production and demand; ii) design for circularity; iii) enhance recycling; and iv) close leakage pathways.
This document was approved by OECD’s Environmental Policy Committee on 2 August 2024 and prepared for publication by the OECD Secretariat.