Plastic pollution is one of the great environmental challenges of the 21st century, causing wide-ranging damage to ecosystems and human health, while the fossil-fuel origins of most of the plastics produced have implications for climate change. Yet plastics have become an integral part of the global economy, being used in almost all economic sectors.
The OECD’s Global Plastics Outlook: Policy Scenarios to 2060 first provides an overview of plastics use, waste and environmental impacts with current policies until 2060 and then compares two scenarios to understand the policies needed for, and economic implications of, drastically reducing the environmental impacts of plastics.
An additional scenario, which has climate mitigation as its primary objective, examines the cross implications of policies aimed at climate mitigation and plastics leakage reduction.