Plastic Pollution And Economic Growth: Influence Of Corruption And Lack Of Education

While green economic growth driven by technological innovations is often heralded as a solution to plastic pollution, it seems to clash with planetary limits. Through the development of two global socio-economic models, forecasting inadequately managed plastic waste until 2050 across 217 countries and territories, we underscore the adverse ecological impacts resulting from the absence of regulatory frameworks and educational environmental initiatives. Utilizing country-specific data from the World Bank, our projections reveal a significant surge in the global cumulative stock of inadequately managed plastic waste, projected to escalate from 61–72 million metric tons (MT) in 1990 to 5109–5678 MT by 2050. Our analysis of four scenarios—business-as-usual (BAU), GDP capping, education extension, and corruption combating—unveils divergent outcomes. In the GDP capping scenario, the annual volume of inadequately managed plastic waste sees a slight increase, reaching 64–119 million MT/year by 2050, compared to 61–110 million MT/year in the BAU scenario. Conversely, in the education extension scenario, the volume decreases by 34% by 2050 relative to BAU projections. Similarly, in the corruption combating scenario, the volume diminishes by 60%. Detailed insights are provided in our country-by-country predictions.