Post by Alliance to End Plastic Waste

Advancing plastics circularity starts with building a clearer understanding of how circularity outcomes are shaped across countries and regions. Plastic waste is a global challenge, but many of the key levers that influence circularity outcomes – including behavioural change, infrastructure investment, regulation, downstream industry, and viable end-use markets – are shaped through national policy frameworks and domestic investment. This makes countries a critical unit of analysis for assessing progress and identifying where targeted action can have the greatest impact. Existing indices and reports capture important aspects of circularity, but what's still missing is a consistent country-level view that is both comparable across markets and regularly maintained. Regional and national frameworks tend to cover limited geographies or update inconsistently. In collaboration with Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the Alliance is currently developing the Plastics Circularity Transition Index (PCTI) – a proposed framework intended to support a more consistent country-level assessment of plastics circularity. The PCTI is being designed to help identify progress, gaps, and priority intervention areas through system-level insights across the plastics value chain. The proposed framework focuses on approximately 50 countries representing around 90% of global plastic waste, where improvements in circularity could have the greatest impact. We are working towards publishing the first edition of the PCTI by the end of 2026. The white paper released today outlines the rationale behind the framework, its proposed approach, and the thinking informing its development. Read the full white paper: https://bit.ly/4ukFc7L #EndPlasticWaste #SystemsChange #WasteManagement #Circularity