📓Background

In this section, we briefly introduce the topic of plastic waste and its management. We start with a high-level overview of the dynamics – origin and evolution – of plastic materials, to move to how the waste is generated and managed, and what are the different end-of-life fates of plastic waste.

Dynamics of plastic materials

Plastic waste derives from primary (plastic) materials and (plastic) products present in the country. Before being fully consumed, primary materials and products pass through a “usage” phase and may be considered as potential (or future) waste. The duration of this usage phase is related to the lifespan of a given material/product: e.g., for packaging, the average lifetime is 1 year, for products from the automotive industry the average lifetime is 15 years.

Plastic materials and products origin from:

1. production within the country in the selected year

2. stock of materials and products from previous years which have not been consumed yet

3. import from other countries

The possible outcomes for materials and products are:

1. to become waste

2. to contribute to the new stock of materials (when they don’t reach the end of life)

3. to be exported to other countries

Once they enter the country, independently from their origin, materials and products can end up in any of the possible outcomes, each of which will have a different impact on the country’s plastic footprint.

All sources and outcomes of plastic are re-grouped into the 3 following buckets:

1. net input, net quantity of plastic present in the country in the given year

2. change in stock, difference between new and old stock

3. waste, (same as before) plastic waste generated

The Plasteax model first splits the net input into waste generated and change in stock. Then it focuses on the waste generated to understand what is managed and how, and what is mismanaged. All this information is computed in a very granular form, and is be further discussed in the section dedicated to the model.

Waste management: end-of-life of plastic waste

Generated waste requires management. Breaking down the different fates that plastic waste undergoes is crucial in order to measure the environmental impact of plastic. Plastic waste is not considered to pollute the environment when it is collected and either exported or properly disposed (recycling, incineration, or landfilling).

Pollution is caused by the share of plastic waste that is not properly disposed by a country’s waste management system (formal or informal) being therefore mismanaged. Mismanaged waste may originate from uncollected waste, improperly disposed waste, and littering. Ultimately, the share of mismanaged waste – a fraction of the total plastic waste – is what gets leaked into the environment (soil and other terrestrial compartments, water, and air).