Functional classification and material characterization of plastic packaging in Flemish land litter to support effective reduction policies

Littered plastics are ubiquitous in the environment. This work presents an elaborate functional classification and material characterization of plastic packaging in land litter representatively sampled in Flanders, to support policy makers in taking effective reduction measures. In terms of mass, plastic bottles constituted the largest functional fraction (50.4 %) within plastic packaging found in land litter, followed by packaging films (food and non-food combined, 19.2 %) and rigid packaging (food and non-food combined, 18.2 %). In contrast, in number, plastic bottles were only the third largest fraction (10.1 %), after food (37.9 %) and non-food (26.2 %) packaging films. The difference between mass and number % for plastic packaging films can be explained by the fact that these films largely consisted of small and lightweight items, such as cookie wrappers and fragments of torn-open packaging. On a material level, the bottles fraction consisted almost entirely of PET, whereas non-food packaging films, bags and loose bottle caps consisted mainly of PE. ‘Cups and lids’, food and non-food rigid packaging and food packaging films consisted of a variety of polymer types, with PP, PET and PE being the most abundant in different ratios. Given the relative importance of plastic bottles, the introduction of a deposit return system could considerably reduce the plastic packaging mass littered into the environment. However, since the share of plastic packaging in the total collected land litter was only 14 %, the overall effect of such a measure on the litter mass will be limited. Given the high number share of food and non-food packaging films such as cookie wrappers, indicating their high ‘likeliness-to-get-littered’, effective policies to avoid littering of these types of packaging seem to be key.