Plastics and Sustainable Development: Identifying and Quantifying Ecodesign Strategies for Plastics

In 2015, the United Nations introduced the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to address major global challenges in sustainable development. Different industrial sectors are held accountable by their stakeholders for how their actions can contribute to achieving these goals. Among others, the plastic sector has come under scrutiny due to its linearity, characterized by low recovery rates after use and adverse effects on the environment resulting from uncontrolled disposal. Therefore, focus should be given not only to improving production processes and developing regulatory frameworks to manage plastic wastes but also to product design, as composition and construction determine whether products can be effectively recovered and recycled after use. Ecodesign is an approach that seeks to integrate different environmental considerations as early as during the design phase by focusing on the entire lifecycle of a product. To understand how plastics influence various dimensions of sustainability, a systematic literature review was conducted to examine the impact of plastics across different indicators of SDGs and their relationship to different ecodesign strategies. Based on the findings of the review, this study aims to identify plastic-specific ecodesign strategies that can enhance resource efficiency and material recoverability. Furthermore, to compare and quantify these ecodesign strategies, a new methodological framework is proposed.