The report was released by Google, which looks into the total annual plastic production, the amount of plastic from “circular supply chains,” that is, mechanically or chemically recycled plastic. This report highlights that without significant global changes in how the material is managed, humanity should “expect to mismanage more than 7.7 billion metric tons of plastic waste globally” through 2040. But a handful of critical interventions can bring 4.5 billion metric tons of that material into recovery systems by 2040, which requires consumer education, consumer incentives and recyclability design. This report also identifies a few factors hampering more significant plastic recovery.