Evolution of variables explaining global inadequately managed plastic waste in the BAU scenario. Observed data from 1996-2017; extrapolated data from 2018-2050. All values standardized in base 100 = 1996, that is, the amounts in the year 1996 have been set to 100 and any variation is added to 100 in percentage increase.

Contexts in source publication

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... business-as-usual scenario (BAU) forecasts explanatory variables based on past trends observed from 1996-2017 (Fig. 4). The forecast relies on a linear regression calculated country by country. Regarding GDP per capita, we used forecasts from OECD (2019) and Hawksworth et al. (2017), which provide long-term forecasts of GDP per capita for 55 countries. Model 2 tells a different story. It estimates that under the BAU scenario, the annual amounts of ...

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... all mitigation scenarios presented below, we only modify the explanatory variable under analysis (e.g., GDP per capita in sub-section 3.2). All other variables follow the BAU trend displayed in Fig. ...

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... of plastic waste generated (adequately and inadequately managed), which would increase ecological side-effects of waste treatments (e.g., fossil fuel consumption for recycling processes). Focusing the entire solution on economic growth policies is not a solution. Even with the impressive growth of the GDP per capita forecast in the BAU scenario (Fig. 4), 61 million tonnes per year of inadequately managed plastic waste will still be discarded globally by 2050 in the best case (Fig. 7). This is only slightly below 1990 levels estimated at 72 million tons per year by Model ...

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... economic growth cannot significantly solve the problem of plastics, it is due to multiple offsetting factors that counterbalance the effect of the growing GDP per capita. The first factor is world population growth, which plays a major role in Equation 1. The world population is expected to multiply by 1.68 in 2050 compared to 1996 (Fig. 4) in the BAU scenario, which will tremendously increase the global amount of inadequately managed plastic waste discarded annually. Second, it is due to the increasing percentage of population living in urban areas, which is expected to multiply by 1.52 by 2050 compared to 1996 (Fig. 4) and will increase plastic waste generation per ...

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... is expected to multiply by 1.68 in 2050 compared to 1996 (Fig. 4) in the BAU scenario, which will tremendously increase the global amount of inadequately managed plastic waste discarded annually. Second, it is due to the increasing percentage of population living in urban areas, which is expected to multiply by 1.52 by 2050 compared to 1996 (Fig. 4) and will increase plastic waste generation per capita. Third, this is due to the weakening of corruption control policies in many countries (Table 4). The world average for the corruption control policy estimate decreased from -0.19 in 1996 to -0.23 in 2017. With such a trend, the estimate is expected to reach a value of -0.41 by 2050 ...

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... this is due to the weakening of corruption control policies in many countries (Table 4). The world average for the corruption control policy estimate decreased from -0.19 in 1996 to -0.23 in 2017. With such a trend, the estimate is expected to reach a value of -0.41 by 2050 in the BAU scenario (which equates to -21 in base 100 = value of 1996 in Fig. 4). This might lead in the worst case -as estimated by Model 1 -to an increase in annual inadequately managed plastic waste from 61 million tonnes per year in 1990 to 110 million tonnes per year in 2050 (Fig. 8). In countries with the lowest Human Development Index (HDI) and Education Index (EI), there is a tendency of anthropogenic ...