The Global Plastics Alliance (GPA) has announced a huge increase in the number of projects aimed at comabting marine litter in the decade since its inception.
The GPA, a collaboration among plastic industry associations around the world, said there are 395 marine litter prevention projects have been planned, underway, or completed as of early 2020 – a four-fold increase since 2011.
The projects vary widely, from beach clean ups to expanding waste management capacities, and from global research to awareness and education campaigns.
The six focus areas are education, research, public policy, sharing best practices, plastics recycling/recovery, and plastic pellet containment.
In addition, GPA said the global plastics industry continues to move toward more circular systems where resources are used, reused, and recycled to the greatest extent possible.
A consortium of nearly 40 leading global companies has formed the Alliance to End Plastic Waste.
Many of their efforts will focus on developing the waste management infrastructure to capture and repurpose plastics in parts of the world where most of the trash is leaking into the ocean.
Virginia Janssens, managing director of PlasticsEurope, said: “We need strong partnerships between an interconnected plastics value chain and all stakeholders, be they local, national or global, to solve this problem and develop innovative, sustainable solutions.”
Keith Christman, managing director of plastics markets, American Chemistry Council, added: “Projects to combat marine litter have grown fourfold and we continue growing the number of stakeholders involved.”
Callum Chen, secretary-general, Asia Plastics Forum (APF), said: “Globally, plastics producers continue to partner with public and private partners to effect meaningful actions to address the problem of ocean plastic pollution. In APF, we are also engaging the brand owners, upstream resin producers and downstream fabricators in our respective member countries to jointly tackle the global marine litter issue.”
