Ahead of the UN treaty negotiations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) modelled what would be needed to eliminate plastic pollution by 2040, comparing a waste-management-only approach with policies acting on production, design, demand and disposal.
Under the baseline, plastic use rises 70%, from 435 million tonnes in 2020 to 736 million tonnes in 2040. The 'Global Ambition' scenario, in which all countries adopt lifecycle-wide policies, cuts leakage to the environment by 96% by 2040. Relying on downstream waste management alone would require an extra USD 300 billion of investment between 2020 and 2040 and would still not eliminate leakage.
This is the analysis that policymakers cite when arguing that the treaty must address production and product design, not just clean-up and recycling.
It is a scenario model, so the numbers describe what could happen under specified policies, not a prediction of what will happen.