A.1 Examples of Available Methodologies

BOX A.1 Examples of Available Methodologies

In many developing countries, it is not possible to readily access all the data and information discussed in this report. That is why several methodologies for the assessment and quantification of plastic material flows and plastic pollution have been developed and piloted and guidelines are being published to support countries in their data collection efforts. Among others, notable publications come from the following sources:

• The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) program on marine litter and plastic pollution includes development of tools and methodologies, as well as regional and national programs in countries (for example, GIZ 2020). • The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has published a series of reports on marine litter and plastic pollution, the most recent of which (UNEP 2021) has a chapter on monitoring methods, indicators, standards, and programs. • The Joint Group of Experts on Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (GESAMP) has published reports and guidelines related to marine litter (http://www.gesamp.org/publications).

Initiatives such as the Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP) provide toolkits and methodologies for countries, as well as for nongovernmental organizations and research centers (https://globalplasticaction.org/). One of GPAP’s toolkits is the National Analysis and Modelling tool that allows countries to assess their plastic pollution situation and develop actions to transition to a circular plastics economy. It is designed to guide national platforms through the data input and analytics process in order to generate evidence-based scenarios for actions that consider environmental, economic, and social impacts.

Financed in part by PROBLUE, the World Bank carried out analytical work, including diagnostics and assessments, in more than 50 countries between 2019 and 2021. Through such support, teams in East Asia and the Pacific region have developed a toolkit on plastics monitoring methodologies that can help governments, local authorities, nongovernmental organizations, and stakeholders assess which methods are best suited to meeting their needs based on users’ requirements. Published reports and methodologies can be found at https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic /how-the-world-bank-group-is-addressing-marine-plastic-pollution#1.

Source: World Bank.

○ Hydrological and transport flow models that simulate the spatial and temporal flows of plastic waste throughout the environment help to define a baseline against which countries could measure the progress made against plastic pollution (World Bank 2021). Such analyses help identify sources and types of plastic waste that are most responsible for downstream environmental, health, and economic harm, including pollution hot spots on beaches and in oceans. ○ There are not yet approved and widely used methodologies for this baseline analysis, although GESAMP provides useful guidance (GESAMP 2019). Some methodologies aim to identify accumulation areas, floating litter on rivers, the top 10 or top 20 plastic items within the debris, and the fraction of those items within the volume of waste. From these diagnostics, it is then possible to derive measures that could target the most problematic items. This type of methodology was pioneered in the European Union, where the European Commission commissioned a study that used litter data from research projects, monitoring programs, and cleanups of European beaches to identify the 10 most common single-use plastic items found on beaches (Addamo, Laroche, and Hanke 2018). This study underpinned legislative action to ban these items in the EU common market. In the past three years, the World Bank Group has supported similar studies of plastic leakage to the environment in Cambodia, the Caribbean, Indonesia, Kenya, and the Philippines and aimed to identify the 10 most common plastic items found in river and coastal areas, using satellite imagery, drones and remote sensing, and artificial intelligence. Such analytics have enabled governments to focus limited capacity on implementing upstream regulations targeting the sources of the items contributing the most to pollution hot spots. • Second, consumption patterns of plastic products need to be understood by analyzing retail trade data and household and consumer surveys. The questions are: who buys what and why? Understanding consumer preferences—what product features and qualities are particularly important for consumers—is useful later in the plastic management process to consider alternative designs and substitutes for the most environmentally problematic plastic products and materials, and to design policies that can alter behaviors. • Third, the postconsumption fate of plastic products in the waste management system needs to be estimated. This includes data on volumes of plastic according to weight and product that is collected in different human settlements (through formal and informal channels), sorted at a source or in specialized material recovery facilities, recycled using mechanical and chemical means (through open- and closed-loop systems), or incinerated with or without energy recovery. Then it is important to know the volumes that are transported to formal sanitary landfills and those that are burned in the open, disposed of in unsanitary dumpsites, or just dumped. Information on the commercial viability of individual activities in the waste management system helps assess where the broken links are in the downstream plastic value chain, their origins, and therefore possible means of addressing them through policies.

• Lastly, all the data collection should be accompanied with a mapping of the stakeholders involved in the plastic life cycle, to identify all economic actors, their role and possible influence, and how they may be affected by plastic pollution and the possible avenues to address it.

References

Addamo, Anna Maria, Perrine Laroche, and Georg Hanke. 2018. Top Marine Beach Litter Items in

Europe: A Review and Synthesis Based on Beach Litter Data. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. GESAMP (Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection). 2019.

Guidelines for the Monitoring and Assessment of Plastic Litter and Microplastics in the Ocean, edited by P. J. Kershaw, A. Turra, and F. Galgani. United Nations Environment Programme. GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH). 2020. User Manual: Waste

Flow Diagram (WFD): A Rapid Assessment Tool for Mapping Waste Flows and Quantifying

Plastic Leakage. Version 1.0. University of Leeds, Eawag-Sandec, Wasteaware. Bonn, Germany:

GIZ. https://www.giz.de/expertise/downloads/giz-waste-flow-diagram-user-manual.pdf. UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme). 2021. From Pollution to Solution: A Global

Assessment of Marine Litter and Plastic Pollution. Nairobi: UNEP.

World Bank. 2021. Plastic Waste Discharges from Rivers and Coastlines in Indonesia. Marine

Plastics Series. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Appendix