Decathlon & ETRMA sign up to The Plastic Leak Project

Decathlon and its own bike brand B’Twin has signed up to The Plastic Leak Project, which helps businesses reduce their plastic footprints in a bid to turn the tide on plastic pollution in our oceans.

Lead by Quantis and Shaping Environmental Action: EA, The Plastic Leak Project, which was officially launched last week, will take an in-depth look at the circular economy of plastics, assess existing knowledge gaps and find, compare and develop relevant solutions which businesses can implement.

The European Tyre and Rubber Manufacturer Association (ETRMA), in which bike tyre brands Michelin and Continental are members, has also signed up to the project, which hopes to evaluate and develop scalable solutions to reach near-zero plastic leakage and provide meaningful metrics for products, companies and governments.

According to the project, many quick fixes largely focused at product end-of-life have been identified, such as banning single-use plastics and taxing plastic bags. These measures, while critical for reducing plastic waste, do not get to the root causes of plastic leakage. Depending on the industry, plastic leakage can take place during the use phase, the production process, or even further back along the supply chain.

The project will develop global methodological guidelines to assess plastic leakage in Life Cycle Assessments and publish these as an openly available reference, while developing scientific guidelines and industry-specific guidance enabling companies to locate and measure plastic leakage along their value chains.

Quantis started out as a joining of forces of like-minded individuals in a Swiss lab in 2006, and has now become the go-to environmental sustainability consulting group with offices in Boston, Paris, Lausanne, Bellinzona, Zürich, Berlin, Milan and Bogotá.

The Plastic Leak Project currently numbers 18 members from diverse industries, including: Adidas, Arla, Cotton Incorporated, Cyclos, Decathlon, The Dow Chemical Company, Eastman, Enel X, European Bioplastics, ETRMA, Mars Inc, McDonalds Corporation, PlasticsEurope and Sympatex Technologies, as well as a strategic committee consisting of: International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Life Cycle Initiative and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).

For more information on The Plastic leak Project, or to see how your business can get involved in the initiative, click here.