2nd Working Group meeting: UNEP/EC Project Identifying and quantifying plastic contaminant sources and leakages into the aquatic environment

The first technical meeting of the UNEP/EC Working Group took place in Brussels in September 2024, bringing together over 20 experts from various organisations, as well as UNEP and the European Commission, to discuss and propose a conceptual framework to attend to the objectives laid out by the project. 

The Working Group emphasized the need to harmonize existing plastic pollution models by aligning concepts and assumptions with international frameworks, while being adaptable to local contexts and climate-related events, and able to integrate environmental monitoring and social behavior insights.

Thus, it was defined that the project should develop a so-called “toolkit” to identify and quantify sources of plastic pollution in aquatic environments. The model should be based on leakage factors per source category and incorporate both material flow and spatial analyses, with quantitative and qualitative data to support a practical, value chain-oriented approach.

Based on the work completed so far—which defined the boundaries of the toolkit and proposed useful methodological approaches—as well as the guidance received from the experts within the Working Group, this second WG meeting will focus on the discussion of leakage factors and overall validation of the proposed toolkit. The discussions will be based on a review of existing methodologies and the systematization of the most recent scientific evidence regarding the sources of plastic pollution, with the aim of integrating these findings into the toolkit, with a source category approach.

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