Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions
Plastic bottle along the shoreline.
Catherine Sheila/Pexels
ISSUE

Plastics Policy

A growing body of scientific evidence documents plastic's harmful environmental and human health impacts throughout its life cycle, spanning production to its post-consumption state as pollution or recycled material.

Plastics have been found in the deep sea, the atmosphere, in Arctic sea ice, and in human blood, placenta, and feces—and vulnerable communities and countries are disproportionately exposed. Many scholars consider plastic to be a persistent organic pollutant because plastic waste does not readily degrade in the environment, but instead generates microplastics and nanoplastics.

Until recently, the plastics crisis has been characterized exclusively as a marine debris issue—with estimates suggesting at least 11 million metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste enter the oceans annually. However, evidence is increasingly showing that plastic has harmful impacts across its entire life cycle. Leakage into the environment occurs during extraction and refining of petrochemicals that become plastic products, as well as during consumption and disposal. 

To develop and implement solutions for this global crisis, a wide range of actors—including policymakers, private companies, communities, and researchers—will need to take action, both individually and collectively.

The Nicholas Institute is working with partner organizations to help identify how decision-makers on the local, national, and international levels have responded to this challenge. The Plastics Policy Inventory is a searchable database of public policies introduced around the world since 2000 that aim to reduce plastic use and waste. The companion Plastics Policy Effectiveness Study Library links studies of policy effectiveness to specific documents in the inventory to highlight measured outcomes of implemented policies and, in some cases, how they are leading to unintended consequences.

In addition, Nicholas Institute experts are part of Duke University’s Plastic Pollution Working Group, a robust community of researchers, students, and alumni that is conducting interdisciplinary research on issues associated with plastic across its life cycle—and developing potential solutions.

Projects

Plastics Policy Inventory

The Plastics Policy Inventory is an updatable and searchable database consisting of public policy documents targeting plastic pollution. The inventory currently about 900 downloadable policies, in over 35 languages, with the intent to address plastic pollution by subnational, national, and international level governments. The Effectiveness Study Library compiles literature examining these policies.

Plastic Pollution Prevention and Collection Technology Inventory

The Plastic Pollution Prevention and Collection Technology Inventory was created to aid local governments, nongovernmental organizations, and other stakeholders in identifying technologies that may help to remediate hotspots of marine plastic pollution. The searchable inventory contains 52 technologies to either 1) prevent plastic pollution from entering the environment or 2) collect existing marine plastic pollution.

Oceans@Duke

Oceans@Duke is a multidisciplinary community of Duke’s scholars working on challenges to sustainable use of the oceans.

Plastic Pollution Working Group

Plastic has become so ubiquitous in our daily lives that global plastic production approached the combined weight of the human population in 2015. Unfortunately, much of this plastic ends up in the environment as litter, and it is estimated that 710 million metric tons of plastic waste will enter the environment by 2040, even with immediate and concerted action.

Issue Experts