Plastic pollution: a global event to harmonise monitoring and assessment methods

OGS-NODC has recently participated as a representative of the EMODnet Chemistry consortium in the workshop on Harmonization of Monitoring and Assessment of Plastic Pollution of the Global Partnership on Plastic Pollution and Marine Litter (GPML) Community of Practice (CoP).

The Global Partnership on Plastic Pollution and Marine Litter (GPML) is a multi-stakeholder partnership that brings together all actors working to prevent plastic pollution and marine litter. The GPML's CoPs aim to improve the comparability of data across different approaches and datasets, including data on production, trade, waste management and plastics in the environment. The CoPs on data and methods have actively improved work on harmonising monitoring and assessment methods and data to measure plastic pollution over the entire life cycle of plastics.

The hybrid event took place from 11 to 13 March 2025 at the Environment Laboratories of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) IAEA in Monaco. It was organised by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as the secretariat organisation of the Global Partnership on Plastic Pollution and Marine Litter (GPML) in partnership with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The workshop had the following objectives:

• Identify KPIs across the plastic life cycle for comprehensive progress measurement to tackle plastic pollution from source to sea;
• Identify key terminologies and definitions to create a glossary for better comparability of the data of the identified KPIs;
• Explore options for data integration and expansion of the Digital Platform Data Hub for global and national monitoring and assessment and tracking of progress;
• Further align efforts and strengthen coordination with international partners through the GPML.

The OGS-NODC is part of the Community of Practice (CoP) on data harmonisation, so its contribution focused specifically on the topic of plastics in the environment and its relationship to the other topics assessed. After the workshop, Matteo Vinci, NODC data expert, said: “We are glad to have participated in this ambitious GPML workshop, which aimed to face the complexity of bringing together different communities (plastics in the economy, plastic waste, plastics in the environment) and their best practices and terminologies. A brave step forward in the challenge to harmonise and make comparable the complex world, the terms, the communities involved in plastics and their ability to speak to each other with comparable terms and numbers.”