The DOI matches its Crossref record; 52 of the 52 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Towards circular plastics within planetary boundaries
Open accessAbstract
The rapid growth of plastics production exacerbated the triple planetary crisis of habitat loss, plastic pollution and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Circular strategies have been proposed for plastics to achieve net-zero GHG emissions. However, the implications of such circular strategies on absolute sustainability have not been examined on a planetary scale. This study links a bottom-up model covering both the production and end-of-life treatment of 90% of global plastics to the planetary boundaries framework. Here we show that even a circular, climate-optimal plastics industry combining current recycling technologies with biomass utilization transgresses sustainability thresholds by up to four times. However, improving recycling technologies and recycling rates up to at least 75% in combination with biomass and CO 2 utilization in plastics production can lead to a scenario in which plastics comply with their assigned safe operating space in 2030. Although being the key to sustainability and in improving the unquantified effect of novel entities on the biosphere, even enhanced recycling cannot cope with the growth in plastics demand predicted until 2050. Therefore, achieving absolute sustainability of plastics requires a fundamental change in our methods of both producing and using plastics.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made
Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R., & Law, K. L. (2017) · Science Advances · doi:10.1126/sciadv.1700782 · Cited by 18,606
Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet
Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström, J., Cornell, S. E., Fetzer, I., Bennett, E. M., Biggs, R., Carpenter, S. R., de Vries, W., de Wit, C. A., et al. (2015) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1259855 · Cited by 12,527
Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity
Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., Chapin, F. S. I., Lambin, E., Lenton, T. M., Scheffer, M., Folke, C., Schellnhuber, H. J., et al. (2009) · Ecology and Society · doi:10.5751/es-03180-140232 · Cited by 7,187
The ecoinvent database version 3 (part I): overview and methodology
Wernet, G., Bauer, C., Steubing, B., Reinhard, J., Moreno-Ruiz, E., & Weidema, B. (2016) · The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment · doi:10.1007/s11367-016-1087-8 · Cited by 5,564
The global threat from plastic pollution
MacLeod, M., Arp, H. P. H., Tekman, M. B., & Jahnke, A. (2021) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.abg5433 · Cited by 2,951
Artz, J., Müller, T. E., Thenert, K., Kleinekorte, J., Meys, R., Sternberg, A., Bardow, A., & Leitner, W. (2018) · Chemical Reviews · doi:10.1021/acs.chemrev.7b00435 · Cited by 2,436
Self-citationMechanical Recycling of Packaging Plastics: A Review
Schyns, Z. O. G., & Shaver, M. P. (2021) · Macromolecular Rapid Communications · doi:10.1002/marc.202000415 · Cited by 1,643
Strategies to reduce the global carbon footprint of plastics
Zheng, J., & Suh, S. (2019) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/s41558-019-0459-z · Cited by 1,252
Self-citationChemical and biological catalysis for plastics recycling and upcycling
Ellis, L. D., Rorrer, N. A., Sullivan, K. P., Otto, M., McGeehan, J. E., Román-Leshkov, Y., Wierckx, N., & Beckham, G. T. (2021) · Nature Catalysis · doi:10.1038/s41929-021-00648-4 · Cited by 1,201
Sustainable intensification of agriculture for human prosperity and global sustainability
Rockström, J., Williams, J., Daily, G., Noble, A., Matthews, N., Gordon, L., Wetterstrand, H., DeClerck, F., Shah, M., Steduto, P., et al. (2017) · Ambio · doi:10.1007/s13280-016-0793-6 · Cited by 1,145
Cited by
Depolymerization within a Circular Plastics System
Clark, R. A., & Shaver, M. P. (2024) · Chemical Reviews · doi:10.1021/acs.chemrev.3c00739 · Cited by 408
Sustainable Solutions Through Innovative Plastic Waste Recycling Technologies
Alaghemandi, M. (2024) · Sustainability · doi:10.3390/su162310401 · Cited by 163
Replacing Plastics with Alternatives Is Worse for Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Most Cases
Meng, F., Brandão, M., & Cullen, J. M. (2024) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/acs.est.3c05191 · Cited by 97
Tracing fossil-based plastics, chemicals and fertilizers production in China
Jiang, M., Cao, Y., Liu, C., Chen, D., Zhou, W., Wen, Q., Yu, H., Jiang, J., Ren, Y., Hu, S., et al. (2024) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-024-47930-0 · Cited by 60
McGuire, T. M., Ning, D., Buchard, A., & Williams, C. K. (2025) · Journal of the American Chemical Society · doi:10.1021/jacs.5c04603 · Cited by 32
Metadata
- Authors
- Bachmann, M., Zibunas, C., Hartmann, J., Tulus, V., Suh, S., Guillén-Gosálbez, G., & Bardow, A.
- Venue
- Nature Sustainability
- Published
- 2023-03-06
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 599-610
- ISSN
- 2398-9629 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4323309894
- Cited by
- 394
- References
- 52
- FWCI
- 32.73
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Towards circular plastics within planetary boundaries. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1038/s41893-022-01054-9
- The paper
- Bachmann, M., Zibunas, C., Hartmann, J., Tulus, V., Suh, S., Guillén-Gosálbez, G., & Bardow, A. (2023). Towards circular plastics within planetary boundaries. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-01054-9
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
