Eliminate harmful and avoidable plastics. It involves phasing out unnecessary or single-use plastics, promoting bans or restrictions, and encouraging upstream policy interventions to minimize plastic production. Promotes the adoption of reusable systems and products to replace single-use plastics.
Effective collection and segregation systems are critical to ensuring plastics are captured and directed to appropriate recycling or disposal channels. This focus area supports cities in improving access to formal collection systems, enhancing segregation at the source, and optimizing waste logistics.
Recycling and repurpose are key to closing the loop on plastic waste. This focus area supports the development of infrastructure, technologies, and market incentives that increase recycling rates, reduce contamination, and promote the use of recycled materials to retain plastics within the value chain.
City/National Indicator: Reduction/avoided plastic (t)
City/National Indicator: Increase in collection of plastic (t)
City/National Indicator: Plastic managed, recycled, repurposed (t)
# of packaged and disseminated Plastic Smart Solutions or Tools
# of resources developed to support Plastics Circularity
# of knowledge Sharing Opportunities between cities/partners/teams
The Plastic Smart Guides were developed for cities as a step-by-step process to achieve their Plastic Smart targets. These guides will continue to be molded from lessons learnt and case study examples across the PSC community, as well as best practices that are catalogued on this platform. While the initial guides were developed by WWF colleagues and external experts, moving forward we seek to include guidance and real-world examples from you, our PSC community.
A declaration outlines a city's pledge to achieve measurable targets in reducing plastic leakage. The declaration must be signed by a city authority (e.g. a Mayor), and in some cases, the city council may need to be officially consulted.
Use the Declaration of Intent guide to launch your city's Plastic Smart journey.
Follow a step-by-step process for developing a city's baseline on waste flow, plastics management and plastics leakage into the environment. Identify preferred data collection and analytical tools to ensure consistent monitoring and reporting of outcomes, and to ensure the recommended baselining process is cost effective and replicable across Plastic Smart Cities.
See the Baseline Assessment guide.
This guidance outlines a city's approach to developing an action plan, taking into account the findings of the baseline assessment, to identify high-impact priority interventions for reducing plastic pollution. Developing the Action Plan should be an iterative process, involving consultations with key stakeholders, while remaining flexible to adapt as local situations change.
See the City Action Plan as a guide, and refer to the City Action Plan Template.
Get focused on implementing activities designed in the City Action Plan. From policy interventions, to improving waste management capacity (collection, separation, recycling infrastructure etc), to multistakeholder processes and citizen engagement, implementation toward specific targets requires careful planning and monitoring and evaluation to assess impact. The phase should include a pilot project to trial solutions within a designated area, with a goal to reduce plastic pollution by 30% in the pilot area.
See the Implementation guide.
Monitor changes overtime and adjust for success. Cities need to identify key performance indicators to monitor and assess changes over baseline conditions. The Monitoring and Evaluation plan should closely align with the Baseline Assessment. Recommended third-party monitoring tools and internationally recognized guidelines are found within.
See the Monitoring and Evaluation guide.
Focused on how cities and local governments can start their journey on becoming plastic smart – complete with templates, actionable recommendations, as well as both framework and examples. Submit your information to access the Plastic Smart Guide.
Government Commitment:
(Optional) Declaration of Intent
City/National Assessment:
Stakeholder Analysis:
Identify and coordinate across
Strategy Development
City Action Plan
Policy Advocacy
Advocate city and/or national adoption of policies for effective implementation of the global plastics treaty (EPR, Bans, Regulation)
Financing & Funding Mechanisms
Supporting city capacity to finance scalable solutions
Knowledge Strengthening
Connect cities and national agencies with plastic circularity and reduction technical expertise
Systems & Infrastructure
Support cities with the implementation and evaluation of scalable pilots for circular systems in cities
Reduction of Plastic into Nature
