100 years of plastic -- using the past to guide the future

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive historical and future-oriented analysis of global plastic material flows from 1950 to 2020, highlighting growth trends, waste management challenges, and potential future scenarios to inform sustainable policies.

Contribution

It offers the first detailed regionalized life cycle material flow analysis of all plastics over 70 years and demonstrates how this data can inform future waste management strategies.

Findings

Plastic production has consistently outpaced waste management.

Approximately 60 million tonnes of plastic waste are mismanaged annually.

Interventions are necessary to prevent waste mismanagement from doubling by 2050.

Abstract

Robust and credible material flow data are required to support the ongoing efforts to reconcile the economic and social benefits of plastics with their human and environmental health impacts. This study presents a global, but regionalized, life cycle material flow analysis (MFA) of all plastic polymers and applications for the period 1950-2020. It also illustrates how this dataset can be used to generate possible scenarios for the next 30 years. The historical account documents how the relentless growth of plastic production and use has consistently outpaced waste management systems worldwide and currently generates on the order of 60 Mt of mismanaged plastic waste annually. The scenarios show that robust interventions are needed to avoid annual plastic waste mismanagement from doubling by 2050.