Exciting news: Businesses now have a way to turn their commitments to reining in plastic pollution into meaningful actions with real impact.
The Plastic Leak Project (PLP), led by Quantis and ecodesign center EA, in partnership with 35 private and scientific organizations, has released the Plastic Leak Project Guidelines, the first standardized methodology to map, measure and forecast plastic leakage across corporate value chains.
“This actionable metric is a major step forward — it is the tool companies need to design better products and data-driven strategies to stop plastic pollution along their value chains.”
Julien Boucher, Director of ecodesign center EA
Plastic pollution is a growing risk for businesses. Companies face growing pressure from investors, consumers and increasingly governments to take urgent action toward a circular model of plastics management. Until now, they have lacked clear, reliable data and methods to translate their plastic commitments into actions with measurable and tangible impact. As a result, many of the policies and efforts to date have been based on best guesses rather than science; and therefore, don’t get to the root causes of plastic pollution.
The result of a yearlong collaboration within the Plastic Leak Project, the Guidelines enable businesses at all stages to calculate and report estimates of plastic and microplastic leakage. With a plastic leakage assessment, companies can locate hotspots, estimate the amount of leakage, and identify the factors contributing to the leakage across their value chains.
It’s a valuable tool for sustainability managers, corporate decision-makers, R&D teams, product and packaging designers, marketing teams and supply chain managers to:
- develop plastics strategies,
- define priorities and targeted actions,
- improve product design efforts,
- identify value chain innovations,
- track progress and
- communicate credibly about the environmental performance of products and the business as a whole
The methodology is applicable across sectors ranging from agri-food and apparel to cosmetics, shipping and beyond, to assess plastic leakage linked to transport, textiles, plastic products and packaging, and plastic pellets.
Join the webinar
Want to learn more about this exciting new resource? Join Quantis, IUCN, Sympatex and Arla Foods for the WEBINAR: Tackling plastic pollution – introducing science-driven guidelines to address plastic leakage in corporate value chains on April 2nd to present the PLP guidelines and outline how businesses can leverage them to drive effective plastic pollution strategies.
Ready to assess your company’s plastic leakage? Laura is the one to talk to!
Laura Peano
Senior Sustainability Consultant
Quantis
Related resources
Report By Quantis
The Plastic Leak Project Guidelines
The PLP Guidelines shift the plastics conversation from crisis management to metrics-based problem solving to fuel positive change.
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Plastic Leak Project
The Plastic Leak Project delivers the first science-based methodology to map, measure and forecast plastic leakage along their value chain.
