- Foreword
- Acronyms and abbreviations
- Currency conversions
- Executive summary
- Introduction
- Plastics production
- Recycling plastics
- The recycled plastics industry
- Markets and trade in waste plastics
- Barriers and interventions
- Overview of plastics production processes
- Additives
- Bioplastics
- Degradation definitions
- Lifecycle analysis
- Scottish Carbon Metric Detail
- International Waste Hierarchy according to the IPCC
- Recycling targets
- Plastic waste disposal, recovery and recycling in Europe
- Summary of polymer specific data from OECD questionnaire responses
- Plastic sorters in the UK
- Summary of key data sources for recycled plastics
- Exports of waste plastics
- Imports of waste plastics
- Time series analysis of prices paid for recycled plastics in China
- Overview of policies details provided by OECD questionnaire respondents
- Detailed assessment of interventions
- Examples of innovation in plastics
Plastics have become one of the most prolific materials on the planet: in 2015 we produced about 380 million tonnes of plastics globally, up from 2 million tonnes in the 1950s. Yet today only 15% of this plastic waste is collected and recycled into secondary plastics globally each year. This ...
- Foreword
- Acronyms and abbreviations
- Currency conversions
- Executive summary
- Introduction
- Plastics production
- Recycling plastics
- The recycled plastics industry
- Markets and trade in waste plastics
- Barriers and interventions
- Overview of plastics production processes
- Additives
- Bioplastics
- Degradation definitions
- Lifecycle analysis
- Scottish Carbon Metric Detail
- International Waste Hierarchy according to the IPCC
- Recycling targets
- Plastic waste disposal, recovery and recycling in Europe
- Summary of polymer specific data from OECD questionnaire responses
- Plastic sorters in the UK
- Summary of key data sources for recycled plastics
- Exports of waste plastics
- Imports of waste plastics
- Time series analysis of prices paid for recycled plastics in China
- Overview of policies details provided by OECD questionnaire respondents
- Detailed assessment of interventions
- Examples of innovation in plastics
Plastics have become one of the most prolific materials on the planet: in 2015 we produced about 380 million tonnes of plastics globally, up from 2 million tonnes in the 1950s. Yet today only 15% of this plastic waste is collected and recycled into secondary plastics globally each year. This report looks at why this is the case and what we can do about it, as the pervasiveness of plastics is becoming an urgent public health and planetary problem. Not only is the diffusion of waste plastics into the wider environment creating hugely negative impacts, but plastics production emits approximately 400 million tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions annually as a result of the energy used in their production, transport, and final waste treatment. Improved plastics collection and recycling represents a promising solution to these concerns.