82nd Swiss LCA discussion forum on addressing the issue of plastic pollution: status quo and the way forward

Francesca Verones and Marthe Alnes Høiberg from the ATLANTIS team have organized the 82^nd Swiss LCA discussion forum on 4 November 2022, with the input from Anne-Maire Boulay (CIRAIG, Canada) and Ian Vázquez Rowe (PUCP, Peru). The LCA discussion fora are held three times a year in Switzerland and cover a large range of LCA-related topics. Participants come from academia, industry, government and non-governmental sectors and this, and the format, which allows room for more dialogue and questions than in normal conference settings, make up a very interesting mix

The day was structured into three thematic sessions on the release, the fate and the exposure and effects of plastic and was providing a lot of information on the latest state-of-the-art of addressing marine plastic pollution within life cycle assessment.

We were able to invite speakers from a broad background including chemists, consultants, environmental engineers, industrial ecologists, and intergovernmental organizations. Since the discussion forum was organized in a hybrid form, we were able to include speakers from Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Canada, France, and Peru and three team members of ATLANTIS (Francesca, Marthe and Fei) gave presentations, while Martin acted as an additional moderator.

We learnt that there is a lot of knowledge about plastic pollution available, especially on microplastics. But at the same time, information is scattered and not standardized, which makes comparisons and inclusions into models hard. And, despite all the knowledge, there are still parts with very limited knowledge, such as degradation rates and the exact behaviour of different plastic items in the ocean.

All the slides from the discussion forum are available on the website of the LCA discussion forum and video recordings will be available here.