Can the world agree to a sensible treaty to end plastic pollution?

As the US faces the upcoming inauguration of a president known for opposing regulations, delegates from the US and more than 170 countries are meeting this week try to finalize a global treaty to address plastic pollution, in a process organized by the United Nations Environment Program that launched back in spring of 2022.

Some advocates and countries say this meeting in Busan, South Korea, amounts to a last chance to set common-sense limits to prevent an upcoming wave of plastic pollution. The situation is already grim: The world makes approximately 430 million metric tons of plastic every year, more than the weight of all humans combined. Nearly three-fourths of this material ends up in landfills or the environment. If current trends continue, global plastic use and waste will nearly triple by 2060, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

On one side are the “high ambition” parties, led by Norway and Rwanda, and 66 other countries. They’re pushing for a legally binding treaty that caps production, addresses the design and makeup of products, limits toxic materials, and controls for the pollution and harm caused throughout the entire life cycle of plastic production and use.

Other countries, including those that produce a lot of oil and plastic — such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China — have been resisting limits on production and many of these other demands.

The U.S. position in unclear. The Biden Administration made waves this summer in saying they would support efforts to curb production. And last week, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a new “National Strategy to Prevent Plastic Pollution”, saying it aligned with the nation’s “commitment to negotiating an ambitious international agreement with the aim of protecting public health and the environment by reducing plastic pollution around the world.”

The EPA highlighted the “significant human health concerns” associated with exposures to plastic pollution, including cancers, reproductive health problems, heart attack, stroke and other problems. The EPA noted microplastics have been found in human breast milk and research has found them elsewhere in the body, including in the brain.

Still, this month, White House staffers reportedly told representatives of advocacy groups in a closed-door meeting that they would no longer support mandatory caps on production, and would take a more “flexible” approach to a deal, according to Grist.

The Biden administration has stressed recycling as a solution but non-partisan scientists and advocates agree that to effectively deal with plastic pollution, the amount of plastic produced has to plateau and eventually decline. Recycling is totally insufficient to deal with the problem, said Richard Thompson, a researcher at University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom who has charted the global distribution of microplastics in the oceans.

“We have to reduce the quantity we’re producing,” or else it will “overwhelm” attempts to deal with all the waste, he said.

Concerns about Trump

The results of the US presidential election of Donald Trump loom over the proceedings, advocates say, since he is openly favorable to the interests of the fossil fuel industry, from which plastics are created, and favors deregulation generally.

But the US delegation in South Korea is mostly made up of those in the current Biden administration – meaning there may be even more urgency to get a deal done now. This is the last of five meetings to create a binding legal instrument to end plastic pollution.

Some say the US is unlikely to ratify the treaty in the long-term, given that it will eventually require Congressional approval. “The best that can happen is that they don’t throw bombs into this process” in Busan, said one meeting attendee, speaking anonymously since they weren’t authorized by their institution to speak on the matter.

Thompson said that he is hopeful that a sensible treaty can be achieved. “It’s not about not using plastics,’” he said. “It’s about starting to use them more safely and sustainably than in the past.”

But nobody thinks it will come easy. Neil Tangri, a researcher with the University of California, Berkeley, who’s attending the meeting, said that  “the challenge with plastic isn’t that we don’t know how to live without it — for most uses, we do, or we used to — it’s that the oil, gas, and petrochemical industry has become so powerful that it won’t let us implement the necessary change.”

Thompson, Tangri, and others are part of The Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, dozens of whom are present at the meeting to provide expertise and information to policymakers and delegates from around the world. Members have attended all four prior meetings, and this gathering in Busan is the fifth and last scheduled.

They are pushing for a cap on production and deciding which plastics are essential and which are not — and limiting or eliminating the use of the latter. They also favor a system to account for chemicals of concern used in making plastics, some of which are harmful. New research shows that 16,000 chemicals are used to make these products, with 4,200 of those considered to be “highly hazardous” to human health and the environment.

The group also wants the treaty to establish a non-partisan scientific advisory group that has strict conflict of interest rules to avoid corporate interference, says Jane Muncke, chief scientific officer of the Food Packaging Forum, a non-partisan group based in Switzerland that advocates for healthy food packaging material free of hazardous chemicals.

In an opening speech on November 25, UN Environment Program executive director Inger Andersen made a case to attendees to agree to a strong treaty. “Not a single person on this planet wants to witness plastic litter in green spaces, on their streets or washing up on their shores,” Andersen said. “Not a single person wants chemical-laced plastic particles in their bloodstreams or organs or their unborn babies.”

However, Andersen also failed to respond to questions at a press conference on November 24 about “whether she had pressured some country delegations to lower their positions on production reduction measures,” according to a summary by Break Free From Plastic, an environmental group.

A “pivotal moment”

Some delegations, including India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt, have already attempted to institute a rule to make decisions by consensus, or unanimously, which would effectively give low-ambition countries veto power.

Muncke said she’s hopeful that the process can yield a reasonable treaty, given the urgency and obviousness of the crisis. But she does admit she has seen “a big pushback” from special interest groups at prior meetings she’s attended.

“We have the knowledge [and] the will to do something,” she said. “I would really appeal to people’s moral sense, to say, we have to do something here that is meaningful.”

Environmental groups have been even more adamant, saying a sensible treaty is a must for halting not only plastic pollution by climate change, considering that plastics are made from oil and the production of plastics contributes about 3.4% of global carbon emissions, a number expect to rise given current trends.

“We’re at a pivotal moment,” said Erin Simon, with World Wildlife Fund, an environmental group, in a statement. “Our last best chance to forge an agreement that could end the flow of plastic into nature is within reach, but only if countries come to the negotiating table with a clear vision and determination to get the job done.”

(Featured image by Karina Tess via Unsplash.)