This paper, Addressing the Challenge of Marine Plastic Litter Using Circular Economy Methods, states the possible solution of dealing with the current marine plastics through implementing circular economy practices. This, in conjunction with optimizing landfill management, will help to substantially reduce the amount of those plastics most likely to end up as marine plastic litter.
This Executive Summary (Chapter 1) precedes a short background on the interest of G20 in the marine plastic litter given in the Introduction (Chapter 2), which is followed by a discussion on the application of Circular Economy practices to the short-lived, fast moving plastic products and packaging (Chapter 3). In Chapter 4, the state of plastics today is reviewed. Chapter 5 scopes the scale of the marine plastic litter challenge and briefly describes how plastics move from the economy to the environment. Chapter 6, the by far largest chapter, discusses how circular economy practices could be applied through the product design, production, use, endof-first-life and disposal stages to short-lived and fast-moving plastic products and packaging and offers some policy responses based on experiences of G20 members. Chapter 7 contains a summary of strategies proposed and some final thoughts on how loops could be closed in a circular plastics economy.