Choosing among plastic waste management options: lessons from Zimbabwe’s plastic waste flows

Widespread concerns about plastic pollution have compelled many countries to implement measures aimed at reducing plastic waste (PW) leakage into the environment. Setting 2023 as the base year, the current study employs material flow analysis (MFA) to investigate how the PW situation in Zimbabwe would respond to different management options. The study involved constructing PW flows in an MFA model and re-constructing them under five different scenarios to evaluate how the PW situation changes. Five different indicators are used in comparing outcomes across the scenarios. The results show that increasing PW collections from the current 3.7–10% will increase the availability of plastic recyclates to formal recyclers by 140%, and will raise the country's overall PW recycling rate to 19.8%. However, implementing this measure alone cannot sufficiently reduce plastic pollution. Combining waste-to-energy (WtE) and increasing PW recycling is a necessary interim measure for drastically reducing PW stocks by 40% and creating enough feedstock for a WtE plant with an energetic potential of 3.4 × 10⁶ GJ per annum. The study focuses on Zimbabwe, but the lessons learned can be applied to various contexts and assist similar developing countries in decisively reducing plastic pollution.