Plastic Pollution

Policies like bans or fees on some of the most problematic plastic items have been introduced relatively recently, often in an ad hoc manner, without trying to create comprehensive circular markets. These interventions are usually fragmented and may shift the problem from one place to another. Banning specific products, such as disposable thin-film bags, without ensuring affordable access to environmentally friendly alternatives often pushes consumers to use even more problematic substitutes, with an even larger environmental footprint.

At each stage of the plastic life cycle, government efforts are hindered by lack of capacity. This is true all along the value chain (for example, upstream to enforce bans or restrict single-use plastics or downstream to improve solid waste management). Creating the right institutional structures is essential to an integrated solid waste management system and to deliver basic services (World Bank 2021a). This report promotes a comprehensive approach for plastic management in line with the World Bank Group approach to addressing marine litter and plastic pollution (see box 1.1), focusing on aforementioned policy and markets failures, but it does not delve into institutional aspects and capacity building, because other publications cover these issues (see World Bank 2021a).

BOX 1.1 The World Bank Group Approach to Addressing Marine Litter and Plastic Pollution

The World Bank Group approach is comprehensive and adapted to country context, and it revolves around three broad sets of solutions: (a) stopping leakages in the short term by improving integrated solid waste management and water management; (b) transitioning to circular economy schemes over the longer term to design out waste; reducing, reusing, and recycling plastics; capturing value instead of losing it to the environment; reducing waste and creating sustainable markets; and (c) as a last resort, restoring ecosystems through beach cleanup campaigns or gear retrieval, with a focus on labor creation and livelihood support. This approach requires new policies, behavior change by consumers and industry, investments, and innovation.

The total cost of this approach—covering the full life cycle of plastic—is not well understood, which hampers country decision-making to identify and sequence interventions tailored to their context and needs. Governments play a limited role in implementing plastic pollution management measures but play a critical role in creating incentives for firms and households to invest in and drive the transition to a circular economy. The private sector is diverse, with different motivations, and can contribute through increased financing of physical recycling infrastructure and through developing, producing, and using new products, alternatives to plastics, or more easily recyclable plastics.

Source: World Bank.