Buy Your Way Out
The rocky road to plastics neutrality

The idea is explained quickly: individuals and companies pay for so-called plastic credits so that NGOs and social enterprises remove plastic waste from the environment.

But it is not quite that simple, because the plastic crisis is not only an ecological and economic problem, but also a social one. The accusation of greenwashing always resonates, especially when it comes to so-called plastic neutrality.

In addition to a multitude of risks, however, the novel offsetting concept for plastics certainly offers potential. This is particularly the case when plastic credits can contribute to the development of waste management and recycling infrastructure in an easy and fast way.

The new POLYPROBLEM report Buy Your Way Out by the Röchling Foundation and the consultancy Wider Sense in cooperation with Yunus Environment Hub takes a closer look at the multiverse of actors and their interests in the global plastic credit market, identifies existing gaps and highlights the need for further development.

All in all, the market is still at the very beginning of its development in many aspects. This makes it much more difficult for market participants to truly benefit from the plastic compensation schemes.

The report is available for download here.