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Addressing plastic pollution and other negative impacts of plastics requires more than political ambition. It also demands a far better understanding of plastics throughout their life cycle, from production and use to recycling and waste management.
That is the conclusion of a new study in which an international team of researchers identifies key knowledge gaps that stand in the way of more effective plastics governance.
The study focuses on the European Union, one of the world's most ambitious regulators of plastics.
However, the study speaks to broader questions about plastics governance that extend beyond the European Union, says the study's lead author, Stine Hach Juul Madsen, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Food and Resource Economics (IFRO) at the University of Copenhagen.
“There is a strong political ambition in many places to regulate plastics. But it is difficult to design effective measures when we still lack fundamental knowledge about how plastics are produced, used and managed, as well as the impacts they have. Our study identifies those knowledge gaps.”
Governing in the dark
Plastic pollution in the world's oceans, the growing concern over microplastics and the climate footprint associated with fossil-based plastics have attracted increasing attention in recent years. Yet in many areas, policymakers are still working with limited evidence.
One example is our understanding of how plastics move through society. Data on recycling remain so incomplete that significant uncertainty persists about how much plastic is actually recycled in the EU and about the environmental benefits recycling ultimately delivers.
Other areas are even less well understood. Stine Hach Juul Madsen points to the ecotoxicological impacts of plastics—that is, the extent to which the thousands of chemicals used in plastic products may pose risks to human health and the environment.
“For many of the chemicals used in plastics, we still lack basic hazard information, which is knowledge of their intrinsic potential to cause harm. At the same time, there is limited transparency regarding the chemical composition of plastic products. This makes it difficult to assess the exposure and ultimately risk to both people and the environment,” she says.
“Plastics are used in thousands of products and applications, creating a highly complex system. That complexity is one of the main barriers to both effective regulation and efforts to define what a sustainable level of global plastics production might look like.”
Four strategic areas for action
The researchers identify 13 critical knowledge gaps that hinder effective plastics governance. To help address them, they propose four strategic action areas:
- Strengthening the evidence base where critical knowledge is lacking
- Developing more standardised and comparable methods
- Increasing transparency, particularly around industry data
- Improving tracking and traceability across the plastics value chain
The study highlights transparency as a cornerstone of effective plastics governance. Without access to reliable information on chemicals, trade flows and recycling outcomes, policymakers, regulators and other stakeholders risk making decisions in the dark.
At the same time, the researchers stress that better knowledge alone will not solve the problem. Strong industrial interests and political disagreements may still delay or prevent action. International negotiations on a global plastics treaty under the auspices of the United Nations, for example, continue to face significant political headwinds.
“Our study does not point to a single solution. Rather, it identifies a number of concrete areas where a stronger knowledge base could make it easier to develop more effective plastics regulation. This is work that the EU can continue pursuing while we wait for the international negotiations to move forward.”