Single-Use Plastic Life Cycle. New Publication: Addressing Single-Use Plastic Products Pollution using a Life Cycle Approach. In response to the request by Member States at the Fourth session of the UN Environment Assembly in March 2019, the report “Addressing Single-Use Plastic Products Pollution using a Life Cycle Approach” describes:
1- actions taken by Member States to address single-use plastic products (SUPP) pollution and
2- a summary of recommendations from a series of LCA meta-studies on the full lifecycle environmental impacts of single-use plastic products in comparison with their alternatives.
A critical finding, of this work is that “single-use” is more problematic than “plastic”.
Member States are encouraged to support, promote and incentivize actions that lead to keeping resources in the economy at their highest value for as long as possible, by replacing single-use plastic products with reusable products as part of a circular economy approach.
This will require systems change.
The Life Cycle Initiative is a public-private, multi-stakeholder partnership enabling the global use of credible life cycle knowledge by private and public decision makers.
Hosted by UN Environment, the Life Cycle Initiative is at the interface between users and experts of Life Cycle approaches. It provides a global forum to ensure a science-based, consensus-building process to support decisions and policies towards the shared vision of sustainability as a public good. It delivers authoritative opinion on sound tools and approaches by engaging its multi-stakeholder partnership (including governments, businesses, scientific and civil society organizations).
The Initiative facilitates the application of life cycle knowledge in the global sustainable development agenda in order to achieve global goals faster and more efficiently.