The Prevented Ocean Plastic (POPs) Programme, administered by Bureau Veritas and operated in partnership with environmental standards body Control Union, announced in December 2024 that it had certified the recovery and processing of more than one million tonnes of ocean-bound plastic since the scheme's commercial launch in 2017, a milestone that its proponents argue validates the scalability of independently verified plastic collection as a market mechanism.
The cumulative certified volume reached 1.02 million tonnes as of the programme's December 2024 audit cycle, with 340,000 tonnes certified in 2024 alone, a 28 percent increase on the prior year. The growth rate has accelerated in each of the past three years, driven by an expanding pipeline of certified collection projects and deepening corporate procurement commitments.
The programme currently counts 87 active certified projects across 18 countries, with the heaviest concentration in South and Southeast Asia. The Philippines accounts for the largest share of certified volume at 38 percent, reflecting the country's extensive informal waste collection infrastructure and its status as one of the world's largest sources of ocean plastic pollution. Indonesia contributes 26 percent of certified tonnage, India 15 percent, and Vietnam 11 percent. The remaining 10 percent is distributed across programmes in West Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.
The material certified under the POPs standard is predominantly collected from coastal communities and waterways within 50 kilometres of coastline, the ocean-bound definition that distinguishes the scheme's coverage from general post-consumer recycled content. Collection is predominantly carried out by informal waste pickers whose livelihoods are formally integrated into certified project supply chains, a feature that gives the certification a dual social and environmental value proposition.
Major corporate buyers include HP, which has incorporated POPs-certified ocean-bound plastic into its laptop and printer product lines since 2019, and Dell Technologies, which uses certified material in selected monitor stand components. Consumer goods companies including Henkel, which incorporates ocean-bound HDPE into Persil and Pril packaging, and Mars have also made multi-year procurement commitments to POPs-certified material.
One million tonnes is meaningful proof that the supply chain can work at scale, said James Wakibia, director of ocean plastics partnerships at Bureau Veritas's sustainability practice, in a statement accompanying the milestone announcement. The question now is whether corporate demand signals are durable enough to absorb the supply that is coming online.
The milestone arrives as the programme prepares to publish a revised standard, POPs 2.0, expected in the first quarter of 2025. The revision will introduce more stringent chain-of-custody requirements at the level of individual collection centres and intermediate processing facilities, a response to concerns raised by corporate buyers and assurance teams about the traceability of material as it moves from coastal collection points through aggregation, sorting, and processing before reaching certified end-use applications.
Early consultation documents suggest POPs 2.0 will require digital tracking of material batches using a blockchain or distributed ledger system, a requirement that will increase compliance costs for smaller collection projects but that proponents argue is necessary to maintain the integrity of the certification as corporate buyers face their own heightened disclosure obligations under CSRD and analogous frameworks. The programme's seven-year track record and Bureau Veritas administration give it a credibility advantage over newer entrants to the certified ocean-bound plastic space at a moment of heightened scrutiny across voluntary environmental markets.