Plastic Credits
Introduction
- Let’s keep plastic out of nature 90,300,000 KG of plastic waste cleaned up and diverted to date.
- To provide one complementary solution that can help address the plastic crisis and support the needed paradigm shift, Verra launched the Plastic Waste Reduction Standard (Plastic Standard).
- Through the issuance of Waste Collection Credits and Waste Recycling Credits, collectively known as Plastic Credits, the Plastic Standard drives finance to projects that improve plastic waste management systems around the world.
- Plastic Credits can help keep plastics out of the environment by enabling the creation of sound plastic waste collection and recycling infrastructure and capacities.
- Plastic Credits can mitigate associated environmental and health risks that disproportionately affect the informal waste sector.
- Plastic Credits, when used alongside a company’s plastic reduction and redesign strategies, can play a key role in meeting corporate plastic stewardship goals.
- Plastic Credits can also support the advancement of the waste management priorities of regional mechanisms and global policy instruments.
PLASTIC CREDITS – A KEY COMPONENT OF A COMPANY’S INTEGRATED PLASTIC WASTE REDUCTION STRATEGY
Plastic Credits are an innovative finance mechanism that allow companies to make downstream investments in new or expanded plastic waste collection and recycling infrastructure, particularly in geographies that are disproportionately impacted by plastic pollution (such as Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States). Plastic Program create measurable, verified impacts in line with environmental and social safeguards that alleviate health risks and facilitate additional social benefits for the informal waste sector. Investing in plastic waste collection and recycling infrastructure ensures that any remaining plastic waste in a company’s value chain will be collected, kept out of the environment, and recirculated in the geographies in which they operate. Such investments also increase the availability of recycled feedstock needed to meet companies’ recycled content targets.
Plastic Credits should not be used as a standalone tool or a license to continue business-as-usual practices. Rather, they should form part of a company’s integrated plastic waste management strategy that encompasses both upstream and downstream solutions. Focusing only on upstream solutions such as plastic reduction and substitution without expanding downstream infrastructure would still result in a 28% increase in plastic leaking into the oceans by 2040, compared to 2016 levels. Therefore, in addition to taking actions within their own value chain to address the sources of plastic pollution upstream, companies should also address the plastic waste that remains in their value chain despite plastic reduction efforts. Plastic Credits are an excellent tool for this purpose.
FUNDING PLASTIC CREDIT PROJECTS – LONG-TERM, SUSTAINABLE SUPPORT FOR PLASTIC WASTE MANAGEMENT INFRASTRUCTURE
Finance from the sale of Plastic Credits can enable the development of such waste management infrastructure that is otherwise not viable without the revenue from the crediting mechanism. Through these verifiable investments, companies can facilitate the transition to a circular economy and accelerate the fulfillment of their plastic stewardship goals.
Voluntary mechanisms like Plastic Credits can help incentivize investment in collection and recycling infrastructure, particularly in geographies experiencing large volumes of plastic pollution and lacking the resources to efficiently manage the associated environmental and health risks. Thus, Plastic Credit finance can close the gap on the amount of capital required by governments to manage plastic waste until EPR schemes are developed and become fully functional.
