A local-to-global emissions inventory of macroplastic pollution

Abstract Negotiations for a global treaty on plastic pollution 1 will shape future policies on plastics production, use and waste management. Its parties will benefit from a high-resolution baseline of waste flows and plastic emission sources to enable identification of pollution hotspots and their causes 2 . Nationally aggregated waste management data can be distributed to smaller scales to identify generalized points of plastic accumulation and source phenomena 3–11 . However, it is challenging to use this type of spatial allocation to assess the conditions under which emissions take place 12,13 . Here we develop a global macroplastic pollution emissions inventory by combining conceptual modelling of…

• UO
  University of Leeds