Plastics Disclosure and Reporting

Plastic pollution threatens the function of the world’s ecosystems, undermining biodiversity, vital food sources and major carbon sinks.

Yet despite the scale of the problem and the extent of its impacts, many companies have a limited understanding of how they contribute to it. This means that businesses’ exposure to commercial, legal and reputational risks is unclear, and decision makers lack important plastics-related data necessary to effectively tackle the problem. Voluntary disclosure on plastics at scale will be critical to bridging this gap.

The global non-profit CDP runs the world’s environmental disclosure system. Each year it helps thousands of companies, cities, states and regions measure and manage their risks and opportunities related to climate change, water security and deforestation.

Now, with expertise and support from The Pew Charitable Trusts, Minderoo Foundation and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, CDP is expanding its global environmental disclosure system to help solve the plastic pollution problem, providing decision makers with clear, comprehensive and comparable data on the production, use and disposal of plastics across the global economy.

Our ambition is to build a plastics disclosure and reporting initiative that is comparable to the process used for carbon, informing companies of their plastics footprint, guiding governments on policy and leveraging the power of nearly 700 financial institutions to reduce plastic pollution.