Plastics are pervasive materials in our societies used for a wide range of applications, from food preservation to materials for vehicles, garments and sterile medical devices. While plastics offer numerous benefits, their lifecycle impacts the environment through pollution, as well as climate change and biodiversity loss. Countries around the world have started taking policy action to tackle plastic pollution in recent years. To scale up ambition and better coordinate policy efforts, negotiations began in 2022 to develop an international, legally-binding instrument to end plastic pollution.
Plastic production, use, waste mismanagement and leakage to the environment are not uniformly distributed, globally. Countries in Southeast and East Asia exhibit trends and characteristics that make them both major contributors to plastic pollution and particularly vulnerable to the risks for the environment, human health and wellbeing, as well as economies and livelihoods. In several countries in this region, the development of waste management systems has not been rapid enough to keep up with fast-paced growth in plastics use and waste generation, resulting in releases of plastics to the environment and increasing pollution. Geographical features, such as extensive coastlines, high rainfall and the occurrence of extreme weather events may all contribute to plastics being transported to the oceans via contaminated rivers, contributing to marine debris. Ending plastic pollution is crucial to support the region's ambitions for green growth as well as to safeguard the health of the entire planet.
This Regional Plastics Outlook focuses on Southeast and East Asia, specifically the ASEAN Plus Three (hereafter APT). The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) includes 10 countries: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (hereafter Lao PDR), Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Viet Nam and Thailand. The APT extends this grouping to include 3 East Asian countries (referred to as “Plus Three” countries): the People’s Republic of China (hereafter China), Japan and Korea.
This Outlook intends to support policy design and implementation in the region. It provides an overview of the dynamics of plastic flows for countries within the region, takes stock of current policies, and highlights gaps that need to be bridged to end plastic pollution. The methodology employed in this Outlook builds on the foundational methodological framework developed in the Global Plastics Outlook publications, to quantify the main mechanisms driving plastic production and use, waste and pollution. Using state-of-the-art environment-economy modelling, this Outlook provides detailed sectoral and regional projections of the plastic lifecycle, including for different polymers and applications, waste generation and treatment, and leakage to aquatic and terrestrial environments.
This Regional Plastics Outlook provides policymakers with a long-term perspective on plastics in the APT. It presents coherent projections on plastics use and waste, as well as their environmental impacts to 2050. Through a series of policy packages, the Outlook demonstrates the environmental benefits and economic consequences of stringent policies tackling plastic pollution. The quantitative analysis in this Outlook is centred around two scenarios: a Baseline scenario (showing projections under current policies) and a High Stringency scenario (showing projections for stringent policies aligned with the goal of ending plastic pollution in APT). The Outlook also explores an alternative scenario with lower ambition levels, and another alternative scenario with global scope, showing that, while global ambition remains essential to end plastic pollution at the global level, the APT countries have the ability to act decisively today through high stringency policies to end regional plastic leakage and achieve a cleaner, more sustainable future.