PPR 13 updates IMO plastic litter plan

IMO’s Sub-Committee on Pollution Prevention and Response (PPR 13) agreed a revised marine plastic litter package that now sits with MEPC 84 for adoption, following a review cycle that began with MEPC’s earlier adoption of the Strategy to Address Marine Plastic Litter from Ships and the subsequent replacement of the Action Plan.

The inputs into PPR 13 were rooted in the framework established by resolution MEPC.341(77), which adopted the Strategy to Address Marine Plastic Litter from Ships in 2021.

That resolution set a vision of reducing plastic waste discharges and established the strategy’s role as the mechanism to “guide, monitor and oversee the timely and effective implementation” of the action plan then in force.

The strategy text set out an objective to guide implementation “by the establishment of a timeline and identification of appropriate modalities” and, at that point, stated that IMO aimed to achieve “zero plastic waste discharges to sea from ships by 2025.”

MEPC later adopted resolution MEPC.404(83) in April 2025, approving the 2025 Action Plan to Address Marine Plastic Litter from Ships and stating that it “supersedes the Action Plan adopted by resolution MEPC.310(73).”

The resolution also set a review horizon, agreeing to keep the 2025 Action Plan under review, with a view to assessing, in 2030, the effectiveness of the actions within the Action Plan against the intended outcomes.

Against that backdrop, PPR 13’s core plastic litter outcome was the consolidation of these instruments into a single draft package for committee adoption.

In its session summary, IMO noted, “The Sub-Committee agreed to the draft 2026 Strategy and the Action Plan to Address Marine Plastic Litter from Ships, with a view to adoption by the Marine Environment Protection Committee at its next session (MEPC 84) in April 2026.”

The same IMO summary set out the revised target date in plain terms, “The goal is to achieve zero plastic waste discharges to sea from ships by 2030.”