Great momentum gained for developing systemic solutions to marine plastics

Funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), UN Environment hosted a successful expert workshop in Paris (France) in February, under the GEF project “Systemic Approach to Marine Plastics”. More than 40 global experts, governmental officials, private sector actors and NGOs contributed to the workshop, and the workshop took stock of a growing knowledge on the sources, pathways and key environmental hotspots of marine plastics. Preliminary solutions throughout the plastics value chain have been recommended based on life cycle thinking, to consider upstream, midstream and downstream intervention measures. This project will set the building blocks towards an integrated strategic guidance on the reduction and sound management of marine plastics at the global level. A webinar and a consecutive workshop will be conducted to further refine the recommendations, in order to put forward a global roadmap for tackling marine plastics.

In the meantime, the Life Cycle Initiative has just kicked off a new project in February, on developing a national guidance to map plastics value chains and identify hotspots related to marine plastics. This project is expected to put forward a harmonised methodology with the vision to be applied in many countries. It will facilitate to generate new insight and information how different types of plastics are produced, consumed and transmitted into the marine environment at the national level. The result will be used to develop effective interventions to reduce the impact of marine plastics, such as public policies, business engagement and public participation.

Watch for progress updates in upcoming LC Net newsletters.