Global Tourism Plastics Initiative

Plastic pollution is one of the major environmental challenges of our time, and tourism has an important role to play in contributing to the solution. Much of the plastic used in tourism is made to be thrown away and often can’t be recycled, leading to large amounts of pollution.

With 80 per cent of all tourism taking place in coastal areas , plastic pollution from tourism can easily end up in oceans and waterways. For example, in the Mediterranean region alone, marine litter increases by up to 40 per cent during peak tourist season.

The Global Tourism Plastics Initiative unites the tourism sector behind a common vision to address the root causes of plastic pollution. It enables businesses, governments, and other tourism stakeholders to take concerted action, leading by example in the shift towards circularity in the use of plastics.

The Global Tourism Plastics Initiative requires tourism organisations to make a set of concrete and actionable commitments by 2025:

Eliminate problematic or unnecessary plastic packaging and items by 2025;
Take action to move from single-use to reuse models or reusable alternatives by 2025;
Engage the value chain to move towards 100% of plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable;
Take action to increase the amount of recycled content across all plastic packaging and items used
Commit to collaborate and invest to increase the recycling and composting rates for plastics
Report publicly and annually on progress made towards these targets

The Global Tourism Plastics Initiative is one of the programmes of the One Planet Network.The One Planet Network is the network of the 10 Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production

Global Tourism Plastics Initiative