Plastics Recovery Insights Steering Model (PRISM)

Overview

To end plastic waste, we need to understand the waste management context, analyse the problems, and develop insights for robust solutions. PRISM aspires to be one of the world’s first publicly available data platforms that allows users to integrate and view multiple plastic waste data sets. It aims to help decision-makers analyse opportunities, impact, and potential economic returns to improve waste management programmes.

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Bridging the data gap

PRISM aggregates more than 800 data sources to help users understand local, regional, or global waste management contexts—such as consumption patterns, available waste infrastructure, as well as demographic and socioeconomic data points.

These data points can be visualised in PRISM, helping users compare data from trusted sources at unprecedented levels of granularity, even down to individual cities.

Using the IBM Cloud and Artificial Intelligence (IBM Watson) tools, PRISM can analyse data across various methodologies, and perform data modelling and forecasts. This allows for data from some of the biggest global sources—including the UN Environment Programme, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and International Union for Conservation of Nature—to be harnessed to develop solutions to end plastic waste.

Currently, PRISM is being piloted within the Alliance community, capturing user feedback to further refine the tool ahead of its launch in 2022. We are also working with The Circulate Initiative to run the Data Gap Challenge, seeking proposals to address a lack of data available for selected locations in India, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

“Plastics play an essential role in our global economy, from simple packaging and shipping, to critical, life-saving materials for hospitals and healthcare workers. By harnessing the power of cloud and artificial intelligence we can bring together valuable and disparate pieces of data in secured and flexible environment where everyone from Alliance members to governments and regulators can collaborate to address this global challenge.”

Manish Chawla, Global Industry Managing Director, Energy, Resources, and Manufacturing, IBM