Global Plastics Flow Study

Avoiding Environmental Littering, Pushing Forward with a Circular Economy – Plastics Industry Creates Transparency for Global Plastic Flows

A total of 250 million tonnes of post-consumer plastic waste worldwide

Collected: 173 million tonnes
disposed of inappropriately: 63 million tonnes
dumped irresponsibly: 14 million tonnes

Circular economy has top priority in fight against marine littering

Plastics are an important resource that must be recycled and not end up as environmental litter. In order to manage and optimize the flows of material specifically for this purpose, the material flows need to be known. Starting from this shared objective, members of the Global Plastics Alliance (GPA) commissioned a pilot study to investigate global flows of plastics, including the handling of post-consumer plastic waste. The findings were published during the world's leading trade show, K 2019. The GPA is a collaboration of 75 associations from the plastics industry that is committed to stemming the escape of plastic waste into the world’s oceans (marine litter).

Core Findings about Material Flows in 2018

The extensive study provides important numbers about the worldwide production of plastics, about how they are recycled, but also about how valuable, reusable materials are lost.

Structured Data Capture, Global Cooperation, High Rate of Representation

The Global Plastics Flow Study is an important step towards capturing, processing and evaluating data concerning post-consumer plastic waste in a systematic structure.

Prelimenary Results of the "Globals Plastics Flow" Study 2018

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The partners of the study

The study was performed by Conversio Market & Strategy GmbH in close cooperation with the associations of the Global Plastics Alliance and numerous other institutions.