Ending Plastic Pollution Forever.
Providing UN negotiators and the general public with an AI-powered tool that accurately depicts what our future could look like given a range of different plastic interventions
The Problem
Global plastics pollution is an urgent and growing concern that is exacerbating the climate crisis, creating threats to endangered species and at-risk ecosystems, putting human health at risk, and amplifying core environmental justice challenges.
The Opportunity
Global decision-makers have been working together since 2022 to address what the United Nations calls “a serious environmental problem at a global scale.” In November 2025 they will meet in South Korea to finalize the first-ever international legally binding treaty on plastic pollution.
Over the past year the DSE team alongside academic leaders in plastic pollution and our partners at the Benioff Ocean Science Lab developed a cutting-edge model that predicts the global production, use, and fate of plastics through 2050. We have worked collaboratively with stakeholders throughout this process to ensure our research and models are accessible and useful to policymakers throughout the treaty negotiations process.
Our Vision
Our findings show it is possible to nearly end global plastic pollution if policymakers take action. Our interactive data visualization helps depicts what our future could look like given a range of different plastic interventions. This visualization is designed to be accessible and useable to UN negotiators, researchers, journalists, and the general public alike.
Where we are now
In collaboration with other domain area experts in the global plastics system, DSE created a model and built an interactive data tool that allows UN negotiators to visualize the impact that candidate Treaty policies would have on ending plastic waste. In November 2024 we published a paper in Science with these findings: Pathways to reduce global plastic waste mismanagement and greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Our model analyzes the impact of eight specific policy interventions on plastic waste and greenhouse gas emissions, both individually and when combined. This research forms the backbone of our interactive tool, The Global Plastics AI Policy Tool, providing an evidence-based, AI-powered projection of the future under various policy scenarios. One of our primary discoveries is that it is possible to zero out mismanaged plastic waste by 2040 (see Figure Plastics_tool_1).
This interactive policy simulation environment which projects plastic under different scenarios using machine learning is available at https://global-plastics-tool.org and open source at https://github.com/SchmidtDSE/plastics-prototype. The interactive data visualization is available at https://plasticstreaty.berkeley.edu/.
Impact on Global Stage: Researchers from our team shared our tools at the United Nations third session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-3) in Nairobi in November 2023. We held an in-person side event at INC-3 entitled “Modeling the Path to Zero Plastic Waste: Tools in Support of the UN Global Plastics Treaty”, which brought together researchers and INC-3 delegates to discuss how scientific data and tooling can be used in negotiations. While at INC-3, we talked in person with over 40 people from over 16 countries and gained an extensive amount of feedback regarding our path forward.
Refining Tool Features: From the extensive feedback we received on tool improvement, we identified key improvements to implement in time for INC-4. In addition to minor improvements on usability and accessibility, we are driving forward on implementing two new major features: the incorporation of greenhouse gasses as a metric to and further articulation of the regionalization and country specificity of the data. We are especially excited about these new measures for quantifying the climate footprint of the plastics system to better connect the dots between plastics and climate change in these negotiations. Both new features require the addition of new data sources and methodology in our modeling efforts.
Broader Engagement: Our work gathered international and media attention including ABC7, Time, Nature, and The Washington Post.
Where we are going
Setting the Stage for Transformative Action: We are preparing to attend INC-5 in November 2024, when policymakers will meet in South Korea to finalize the first-ever international legally binding treaty on plastic pollution. We hope to see decision-makers take action to realize Treaty’s stated goal of ending plastic pollution.
