National Guidance for Plastic Pollution Hotspotting and Shaping Action

The Life Cycle Initiative, in collaboration with International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), EA – Shaping Environmental Action and Quantis, launched this project to develop guidance and a methodological framework to facilitate a process of prioritizing solutions for plastic pollution. The project is co-funded by UNEP, Norwegian Government, and the funding partners of the Life Cycle Initiative.

The National Guidance is released jointly with IUCN in 2020 (available in English, Spanish and Portuguese). It aims to help countries, regions, and cities to understand what kind of plastics are leaking into the environment, where they are leaking, and why the leakage happens. It supports users with a model workflow, including a set of tools and templates for data collection, analysis, diagnosis, planning and implementation. The outputs will enable governments and consultants to estimate the relative importance of various hotspots of leakage relevant to their country, and to prioritize key areas of intervention, facilitated through easy-to-use guidance/workflow and data.

The methodology has been piloted by IUCN in Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Thailand, Viet Nam, Cyprus, Menorca (Spain), and Tanzania. These country pilots have produced substantial amounts of data and are being used to guide policymakers on how to use the Guidance and tools to develop interventions.

Please find the Guidance, associated modules and tools, the tutorial manual for the Guidance, and reports for its country pilots on the project website: https://plastichotspotting.lifecycleinitiative.org/

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