Infographic 1
Structure of the physical flow account for plastic material

Infographic description

The title of the infographic is "Structure of the physical flow account for plastic material"

The infographic is a visual representation of the physical flow account for plastic material. It depicts the progression of plastic through production, use, diversion, recycling and disposal.

The flow starts in the upper left-hand corner, where there is a green box labelled "Manufacturers." From this box, a grey arrow labelled "Produced plastic" points down to another green box labelled "End users." One end of a double-ended yellow arrow labelled "Net trade in produced plastic" points toward the middle of the "Produced plastic" arrow.

To the right of the "End users" box, there is a semi-circular arrow labelled "Net change in plastic stock" flowing out of and back into the "End users" box. There is also a grey arrow pointing down from the "End users" box to a grey box labelled "Total discarded plastic."

There is an arrow pointing down and to the left from the left side of the "Total discarded plastic" box labelled "Leaked plastic." There is also a grey arrow pointing down from the "Total discarded plastic" box to another grey box labelled "Collected plastic waste."

To the right of the "Collected plastic waste" box, there is a blue arrow labelled "Diverted plastic" that points to a green box labelled "Primary processors." There is a blue arrow to the right of the "Primary processors" box labelled "Baled plastic" that points to a green box labelled "Recyclers." One end of a double-ended yellow arrow labelled "Net trade in baled plastic" points towards the middle of the "Baled plastic" arrow.

The "Recyclers" box is in the lower right-hand corner of the infographic, and there is a curved blue arrow labelled "Recycled plastic" coming out of the top of it that points up and back over to the "Manufacturers" box in the upper left-hand corner.

There are three grey arrows labelled "Directly disposed plastic waste," "Primary processor residual" and "Final processor residual" that point downward from the "Collected plastic waste," "Primary processors" and "Recyclers" boxes, respectively, toward a grey box labelled "Total disposed plastic."

Lastly, there are two grey arrows beside each other pointing down from the bottom of the "Total disposed plastic" box: the one on the left is labelled "Plastic landfilled or incinerated without energy recovery," and the one on the right is labelled "Plastic incinerated or gasified with energy recovery."