Plastic Pollution Treaty: UK National Modelling

Overall project objectives:

Defra need to agree the final UK negotiating mandate across UK government ahead of the Fifth Session of the International Negotiating Committee (INC5) in November 2024, where the INC is expected to agree a new plastic pollution treaty.

To facilitate cross government agreement, Defra require high-level analysis of the potential environmental, economic, and social impacts of different scenarios of the treaty on the UK. This analysis will be used to support and inform UK government ministers and senior civil servants in understanding the potential impacts the treaty could have on the UK. It will facilitate cross-government agreement on the final UK negotiating mandate, which is needed to attend the final treaty negotiations at INC5.

Project details: Systemiq will use best available data to create a UK version of their existing model on Plastic Treaty Futures. The UK scenarios will mirror those in the existing model: lifecycle scope, degree of global action coordination, and business-as-usual. The modelling will assess the impacts of different scenarios on the UK, according to different levels of ambition. The impacts covered by the modelling: costs, plastics use, GHG emissions, plastic fate (broken down into reduce, substitution, recycled, landfilled, and mismanaged), jobs, and estimates of economic activity.