Numerous calls for international action have been stirred by the scale and impacts of plastic pollution on the world’s oceans and marine ecosystems. Growing scientific evidence of both the environmental and health challenges presented by microplastics has widened the scope of policy discussion to ‘plastic pollution’. Hence, there is an increasing consideration of the social, health and fiscal impacts of plastic pollution on land, including in developing countries struggling to manage a rising tide of plastic waste. And yet, there is little attention among scholars or policy analysts to the strong economic and political forces that drive the expanding global plastics economy.

This multi-disciplinary, collaborative project aims to answer the following questions:

– What is the global political economy of growing plastic pollution?

– What is the lifecycle of plastic production and pollution?

– What could be the impact of economic instruments, international policy tools and legal frameworks in the reduction of both plastic production and pollution and the transformation of the global plastics economy?

Several methods will be employed in order to address this topic: the collection and analysis of quantitative data through interviews with major industry practitioners, regulators, academics as well as government officials in developed and developing countries; policy and legal analysis; literature reviews; analysis of quantitative data on international trade and investment flows; and, for some topics, mini industry or country case-studies within research papers.

Our project will convene a multidisciplinary group of leading experts from academia, international organisations and stakeholder groups to focus on the ‘supply side’ of plastic production and pollution at the global level.