Recycling and Circular Economy Standard — WIA-ENE-023
The chapter covers the regulatory, policy, and standards scaffolding for Marine Litter and Single-Use Plastics (SUP). The WIA-ENE-023 simulator's ENUM tokens MARINE_LITTER, SUP_DIRECTIVE, EU_2019_904, MICROPLASTICS, MARINE_PLASTIC, OSPAR, and UNEP_MARINE model the chapter's core concepts.
The quantitative scale of marine plastic pollution organizes as follows. Jambeck et al. (2015), publishing in Science under the title "Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean," estimated that 4.8 to 12.7 million tonnes of plastic entered the ocean from land in 2010 alone. The estimate became the reference figure for global policy discussion after 2015. A follow-up paper by Borrelle et al. (2020) in Science projected that annual marine input could reach 53 million tonnes by 2030, implying that, absent any policy intervention, global marine plastic pollution will quadruple relative to 2010.
The UNEP report "From Pollution to Solution: A Global Assessment of Marine Litter and Plastic Pollution" (2021) estimated the cumulative global marine plastic stock at 75 to 199 million tonnes, with 9 to 14 million tonnes added each year. The report reaffirmed the EMF 2016 projection in "The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the future of plastics" that "by 2050, by weight, the ocean could hold more plastic than fish."
The European Union's Single-Use Plastics Directive (EU 2019/904, adopted 12 June 2019, fully in force 3 July 2021) established the global policy benchmark for single-use plastic regulation. The simulator's SUP_DIRECTIVE and EU_2019_904 tokens model this directive. The directive's core scaffolding consists of five pillars.
First, "Market Restriction" (§5 and Annex Part A) prohibits the placing on the market of six single-use plastic products (cotton bud sticks, cutlery, plates, straws, beverage stirrers, and balloon sticks) together with expanded polystyrene (EPS) food containers, beverage cups, and oxo-degradable plastics. Second, "Consumption Reduction" (§4 and Annex Part A) requires member states to set quantitative reduction targets for single-use plastic food containers and cups. Third, "Product Requirements" (§6 and Annex Part C) requires that beverage containers of three litres or less be designed so that caps and lids cannot be separated from the bottle body (the "tethered cap" requirement, in force from July 2024).
Fourth, "Marking Requirements" (§7 and Annex Part D) require mandatory labelling on hygiene products, wet wipes, tobacco filters, and beverage cups indicating "contains plastic" and the environmental impact of improper disposal. Fifth, "Extended Producer Responsibility" (§8 and Annex Part E) requires producers to bear the cost of collection, cleanup, and environmental treatment of single-use plastic products. These five constitute the "five pillars" of the SUP Directive.
Annex Part F of the SUP Directive phases in a recycled-content obligation (rPET content) for beverage PET containers: 25 percent recycled content by weight by 2025, and 30 percent recycled content by 2030. The obligation expands to all beverage containers (including plastics other than PET) at 30 percent recycled content from 2030. This obligation has so increased R_PET demand in member states that R_PET pellet prices periodically exceed virgin PET prices. The simulator's R_PET token accepts the obligation rate as an input and dynamically analyses the economic viability of the global and Korean R_PET markets.
"Microplastics" are plastic particles smaller than 5 mm in diameter, classified into "Primary Microplastics" (manufactured as micro-sized particles for industrial use) and "Secondary Microplastics" (fragments produced by the degradation of larger plastics). The simulator's MICROPLASTICS token models both classes. The measurement-standard landscape has stabilized around ISO/TR 21960:2020 "Plastics — Environmental aspects" and ISO 24187:2023 "Principles for the analysis of microplastics present in the environment."
Representative primary microplastics include cosmetic and toothpaste "microbeads" and "microfibres" released during laundry. The European Commission adopted the "Microplastics Restriction" (new entry in REACH Annex XVII) on 27 September 2023, phasing in a prohibition of the intentional addition of microplastics.
The OSPAR Convention (Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic, adopted 1992, in force 1998) is the marine-environmental protection framework for the north-east Atlantic. The simulator's OSPAR token models the convention. The 16 contracting parties (UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and others, plus the EU) set quantitative marine-litter reduction targets through two strategic instruments: the "OSPAR Marine Litter Strategy 2014-2024" and the "North-East Atlantic Environment Strategy 2030."
The OSPAR "Beach Litter Monitoring" programme is the global monitoring standard, tracking item counts on 100-metre beach segments on a quarterly cadence since the late 1990s. Monitoring results inform the "OSPAR Quality Status Report" (QSR, 2010, 2017, 2023). Korea is not a contracting party but the Korea Maritime Institute (KMI) and the Korea Marine Environment Management Corporation (KOEM) have adopted the OSPAR methodology for the Korean coast's "National Coastal Litter Monitoring."
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has been the centre of marine-litter global governance since the 2009 report "Marine Litter: A Global Challenge." The simulator's UNEP_MARINE token models the UNEP assessment framework. UNEP's key programme is the "Global Partnership on Marine Litter" (GPML, launched 2012), with more than 60 participating countries.
UNEP's most consequential output is the resolution adopted at UNEA-5.2 (the resumed fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly, 2022), titled "End Plastic Pollution: Towards an international legally binding instrument." The resolution mandated negotiation of an international legally binding agreement (commonly the "UN Plastics Treaty"), and the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) held five sessions across 2022 to 2024. INC-5, held in Busan in November-December 2024, was scheduled as the final negotiating session but did not reach agreement on reduction targets, hazardous-chemical regulation, and financial support; an additional INC-5.2 session in Geneva in August 2025 took up the unresolved items.
In Korea, the legal scaffolding for marine-litter policy is the "Marine Environment Management Act" (in force 2007) and its enforcement decree. The "Marine Waste Comprehensive Plan 2021-2030," published jointly by the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, sets three quantitative targets: halving marine-litter generation by 2030, achieving a 90-percent recovery rate, and reducing microplastic generation by 30 percent. KOEM administers the operational execution, and KMI performs policy evaluation and international cooperation support.
Korea's marine-litter generation was approximately 144,000 tonnes per year in 2023, with the source distribution (a) fishing-activity waste (abandoned, lost, or discarded fishing gear and decommissioned vessels) at roughly 38 percent, (b) river-borne land-source inflow at roughly 33 percent, (c) direct beach dumping at roughly 19 percent, and (d) foreign-origin inflow at roughly 10 percent. The disproportionate share of fishing gear (versus the global average of about 20 percent) is a Korean particularity, addressed by the "Master Plan for Recovery and Recycling of Abandoned Fishing Gear" (2022) published by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries.
At the municipal level, the leading examples are the "Busan Marine Cleanup Programme" (Busan Metropolitan City, 2018) and the "Clean Jeju Marine Cleanup Programme" (Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, 2019). Busan operates four cleanup vessels combined with an automated coastal-litter collection facility at Busan Port (operational since 2023), recovering approximately 1,800 tonnes per year. Jeju's programme operates a "Clean Jeju Sea Stewardship" citizen-volunteer programme that engages roughly 2,500 volunteers per year and recovers approximately 800 tonnes of beach litter.
GESAMP (Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection) is the marine-environmental scientific advisory body jointly operated by ten UN-system agencies (UNEP, IMO, WMO, IAEA, UNESCO-IOC, UNIDO, FAO, UNDP, ISA, WHO). GESAMP's "Working Group 40" has published four assessment reports on "Sources, fate and effects of microplastics in the marine environment" since 2015, supplying the authoritative scientific baseline for global marine-microplastics science. The simulator's MARINE_LITTER token uses GESAMP findings as core scientific input.
The simulator's MARINE_LITTER token analyses marine-litter flows in a four-stage model. Stage 1 is "Source Identification," partitioning the input into four classes: fishing-activity waste, river-borne land-source, direct beach dumping, and foreign-origin inflow. Stage 2 is "Pathway Analysis," tracking the transport paths (direct dumping, river transport, wind transport, leakage from waste-treatment sites) from source to the marine environment. Stage 3 is "Fate Assessment," quantifying the breakdown flows (from macro to micro and to nano plastics) and the uptake flows into marine biota. Stage 4 is "Recovery Estimation," quantifying recoveries from marine cleanup, beach cleanup, and fishing-gear retrieval. The model supports four policy scenarios (baseline, full SUP Directive, ambitious UN Plastics Treaty, and Just Transition) for comparative quantitative analysis.
Global marine-litter recovery technologies cluster into "manual" and "automated" approaches. Manual recovery involves volunteers, fishers, and marine cleanup crews physically retrieving litter with hand tools; automated recovery uses mechanized equipment, autonomous vessels, and river-interception devices. The Netherlands-based non-profit "The Ocean Cleanup" (founded 2013) is the leading automated-recovery example: its "System 03" (operational from 2023) recovered a cumulative 500,000 kg of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and its "Interceptor" river barriers are deployed in 16 countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, and Guatemala, to block riverine inflow into the ocean. In Korea, the Busan Port automated coastal-litter facility (2023) is the flagship automated example, with four installations recovering roughly 600 tonnes per year. Approximately 80 Australian-origin "Seabin" autonomous-collection devices are deployed at Korean ports and beaches, including Incheon, Ulsan, Yeosu, and Jeju.
Marine microplastics enter the human body through the food chain. The WHO report "Microplastics in drinking-water" (2019) reviewed detection of microplastics in tap and bottled water and judged decisive evidence on human-health impacts to be lacking at the time. Subsequent research has suggested potential human-health impacts via persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and adsorbed heavy metals that microplastics may carry. In 2022, Heather Leslie's group at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam published the first detection of microplastics in human blood; the detected polymers were PET, PE, PMMA, and PS, with an average concentration around 1.6 μg/ml, marking the first empirical confirmation of human absorption and accelerating subsequent global policy debate. Korea's Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) launched its "Microplastics Food Safety Assessment" in 2023, with completion of a quantitative dietary-exposure assessment scheduled for 2025.
The chapter composes with the following primary sources: EU Single-Use Plastics Directive 2019/904; EU Microplastics Restriction (REACH Annex XVII, 2023); Jambeck et al. "Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean," Science (2015); Borrelle et al. "Predicted growth in plastic waste exceeds efforts to mitigate plastic pollution," Science (2020); UNEP "From Pollution to Solution" (2021); UNEP-EMF "The New Plastics Economy" (2016); UNEA-5.2 resolution "End Plastic Pollution" (2022); UN Plastics Treaty INC-1 through INC-5 outcomes; OSPAR Convention (1992 and 1998); OSPAR Marine Litter Strategy 2014-2024; OSPAR Quality Status Reports (2010, 2017, 2023); GESAMP Working Group 40 reports (4 volumes); ISO/TR 21960:2020; and ISO 24187:2023 Microplastics Analysis. [8.99]
The Korean edition supplements the chapter with mappings to the Marine Environment Management Act (2007), the joint Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries "Marine Waste Comprehensive Plan 2021-2030," the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries "Master Plan for Recovery and Recycling of Abandoned Fishing Gear" (2022), KOEM's "National Coastal Litter Monitoring," KMI policy-evaluation outputs, Busan Metropolitan City's marine-cleanup programme (2018), Jeju Special Self-Governing Province's marine-cleanup programme (2019), regional cleanup programmes in Gangwon, Jeollanam-do, and Incheon, the Ministry of Environment's "Cosmetic Safety Standards" (2017 microbead ban), MFDS "Sanitary Products Sanitary Management Act" (2021 toothpaste microbead ban), KORA single-use product fees, and the SUP-related provisions of the "Act on the Promotion of Saving and Recycling of Resources." Korea hosted the INC-5 negotiating session in Busan (November-December 2024) under joint sponsorship of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Environment, and the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries.
With this chapter, the eight chapters of the Recycling and Circular Economy Standard are complete. The standard supplies four primary alignments — plastics identification codes, the EMF circular-economy model, material flow accounting, and marine litter and the SUP Directive — between global standards and Korean-market practice. The simulator's ENUM tokens are designed to let policy-makers, industry practitioners, researchers, and civil-society organizations all use the same analytical instrument to anticipate the effects of policy change in advance, in the spirit of 弘益人間 — "benefit all humanity" — that orients this work.