Identifying and overcoming social-ecological barriers to ending plastics pollution
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Plastics are deeply embedded in contemporary life, and their production and pollution contribute to irreversible harm across ecological and social systems. Recognized as a “novel entity” in the Planetary Boundaries framework, plastics challenge traditional governance models due to their chemical complexity and diversity, cross-sectoral impacts, and pushback from powerful political and economic actors. This study addresses urgent science-policy gaps through a structured expert elicitation, conducted during the ongoing negotiations on the global plastics treaty. We present the Experts Multi-Issue Knowledge Elicitation (EMIKE) method - a flexible, co-productive approach that addresses social-ecological dimensions of plastics pollution. Through a three-phase process involving 21 interdisciplinary experts, we identified 21 critical issue areas spanning toxic chemical use, social inequality, overconsumption, climate impacts, and financing and policy incoherence, among others. The EMIKE process generated a matrix of interrelated indicators across plastics’ life cycle to inform adaptive, more comprehensive, just, and evidence-based policymaking. EMIKE offers a methodology for surfacing often neglected issues in natural science driven studies, fostering interdisciplinary dialogue, and advancing policy-relevant knowledge. It enables structured elicitation - attuned to power, uncertainty, and evolving political contexts - to better integrate diverse science inputs into global governance. This approach is essential not only for plastics governance, but also for any multifaceted sustainability issue requiring intersectional, systems-based solutions. Key findings highlight the inseparability of ecological and social concerns, the limits of technocratic quantification, and the need to democratize science-policy interfaces. Experts emphasized the importance of precautionary action, transparency, and justice-based governance to counteract corporate influence and systemic inertia. Our study also illustrates how scientific frameworks can support policy development by adequately considering the complexity of global sustainability challenges.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.042 | 0.062 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.010 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.016 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".