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
Decision-makers have been working together since 2022 to address what the United Nations calls “a serious environmental problem at a global scale.” Ultimately, leaders are working to create the first-ever international legally binding treaty on plastic pollution. Over the past year DSE 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 worked collaboratively with stakeholders to ensure our research and models are accessible and useful to policymakers throughout the treaty negotiations process.
Our Impact
Our findings reveal that a package of four key policies—working together across the entire plastic lifecycle—could nearly end plastic pollution. By 2050 this policy package would reduce mismanaged plastic waste by up to 91% and cut associated greenhouse gasses by one third. 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.
Throughout the global treaty negotiation process we provided our recommendations to national delegations and White House officials. We have been inspired see 100+ countries rally behind a treaty draft that includes many of the solutions that surfaced in our research. To date our research has been featured in over 600 US and international news outlets including the Associated Press, ABC7, The Guardian, The New York Times, Newsweek, NPR, Time, and the Washington Post.
Key Highlights
- 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.
- Our model analyzes the impact of eight specific policy interventions on plastic waste and greenhouse gas emissions, both individually and when combined.
- The model reveals that a package of four key policies—working together across the entire plastic life cycle—could nearly end plastic pollution by 2050.
The model we built and delivered to delegations also enables policy makers to examine endless combinations of policies at different levels to inform their negotiation positions. Our interactive tool, The Global Plastics AI Policy Tool, provides an evidence-based, AI-powered projection of the future under various policy scenarios. See the interactive policy simulation environment (which projects plastic under different scenarios using machine learning) below and at https://global-plastics-tool.org. Open source data is available at https://github.com/SchmidtDSE/plastics-prototype. Screenshots of the interactive data visualization are below and the full visualization is available at https://plasticstreaty.berkeley.edu/.
Our interactive simulation projects annual global plastic pollution that will be generated in 2050 under different scenarios, piled on top of Manhattan for scale. 
Left: If no action is taken, the annual plastic pollution generated in 2050 would be nearly double - growing to 121 million metric tons. Right: Under a high ambition treaty, the annual plastic pollution generated in 2050 could be cut by more than 90% - dropping down to about 8 million metric tons.
Global Impact: We provided personalized briefings in bilateral meetings with dozens of different national delegations negotiating the treaty at the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) in November 2024, which yielded tangible impacts. We were proud to learn that after providing the Panama delegation with a personalized briefing ahead of INC-5, the country played a lead role in calling for an ambitious global treaty. Moreover, the Panama delegation introduced an important resolution on behalf of >100 nations that reflects some of our findings. Previously our team shared our policy tools at earlier INC sessions including at INC-4 in Ottawa and INC-3 in Nairobi. At these sessions we held presented and collected feedback on our tool, hosted side events, participated in panels, and coordinated with other scientists and modeling efforts to compare and contrast policy considerations.
Where we are going
Setting the Stage for Transformative Action: Schmidt DSE’s vision is a world free of plastic pollution and our work is a testament to what's possible when we make data science open and transparent to help drive environmental change. Although the treaty was not finalized on the expected timeline at INC-5 in 2024, there were a number of positive outcomes that came out of the latest negotiations in South Korea. We are heartened, for example, to see 100+ countries rally behind a treaty draft that includes many of the provisions that surfaced in our research as key solutions for ending plastic pollution. We are encouraged that some of the countries leading this coalition included nations like Panama with which we met to discuss our findings. Much will be determined in this next round of negotiations expected in mid-2025. Throughout 2025 we will continue supporting partners like Panama’s leaders—who are championing the most ambitious treaty outcomes—and ensuring our research continues to inform and strengthen the negotiations.
