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Accelerating Plastic Circularity: A Critical Assessment of the Pathways and Processes to Circular Plastics
Summary
A critical assessment of plastic circularity pathways found that today only 9% of global plastic waste is recycled, with current circularity routes economically unviable, and argues that improving product design and collection and sorting system effectiveness are the most impactful levers for progress.
Achieving plastic circularity is imperative to using plastics without adverse effects. Today, only 9% of global plastic waste is recycled, signifying the need for more substantial advancements to accelerate our progress toward achieving plastic circularity. This article contributes to our collective efforts to accelerate plastic circularity by critically assessing the state-of-the-art, gaps, and outlook of the pathways and processes to circular plastics. It employs qualitative methods to derive new insights that empower scholars and practitioners to prescribe effective strategies to shape the future of plastic circularity and its research agenda. This article concludes that today’s circularity pathways for plastics are not economically viable, significantly hindering their scalability and widespread adoption. It further validates that focusing on the product design and effectiveness of the available collection and sorting systems can considerably improve our progress in achieving plastic circularity.