A new science-based metric has been produced by a range of public, private and scientific stakeholders to enable businesses to identify hotspot areas of plastic entering the natural environment. The ‘Plastic Leak Project’, which involved the collaboration of 35 businesses and public organisations, released the new methodology to map, measure and forecast how much plastics and microplastics leakage can occur across value chains. The project was launched in 2019 and has since garnered stakeholder support from multinationals such as Adidas, Decathlon, Mars and McDonald’s amongst others. The project defines ‘plastics leakage’ as the potential amount of plastics (both macro and micro) that are not managed at the end-of-life or kept in the circular economy. “The Plastic Leak Project has made important advancements towards a credible accounting system for plastic leakage at product level,” WWF US’s manager for plastics and packaging Alix Grabowski said.

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