Of the more than 7bn tonnes of plastic waste that humans have generated in their time on Earth, more than two-thirds has been dumped into the environment — buried, or burnt, or even circulating in our bloodstreams.
And the world’s best hope for a solution to the problem of plastic waste lies in an unwieldy 70-page draft document containing starkly conflicting views. It will be discussed at the fifth and final round of the UN plastic talks in Busan, South Korea, this week, where country delegates will try to shape it into a global treaty.
“It’s crucial that we agree on an effective treaty in Busan,” says Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, Norway’s minister of international development. “We can’t wait another 10 years from now to deliver results.” Plastic pollution is expected to double in 20 years unless the world takes action, she adds.
However, campaigners are warning that the talks risk falling at the final hurdle.
“My greatest fear is that the summit produces a toothless treaty that does nothing to halt and reverse the projected increase in plastic production and pollution,” says Mari Williams, senior policy associate at Tearfund, an NGO. The treaty’s mandate to end plastic pollution by 2040 will only be achievable, she believes, if it results in binding obligations on all member states.
The last round of talks, in Ottawa in April 2024, was regarded as a failure. Little progress was made on what a solution should look like as fossil fuel-producing nations blocked the inclusion of “upstream” measures, such as limiting the production of new plastic.
Campaigners, businesses and many in the so-called High Ambition Coalition — an alliance that includes EU member states and southern hemisphere countries where much of the world’s waste is dumped or incinerated — agree that production limits are the best way to stem the tide of plastic waste and incentivise countries to recycle more.
But countries such as China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, backed by fossil fuel industry lobbyists, have successfully stalled progress at the previous four rounds of talks by entertaining only solutions focused on “circularity” — re-use and recycling — rather than limits on new production.
“It’s just absolute chaos,” says Graham Forbes, global plastics lead at environmental non-profit Greenpeace USA, referring to the draft text. “It’s almost universally accepted that the compilation text coming out of Ottawa is pretty much unworkable.”
Luis Vayas Valdivieso, Ecuador’s ambassador to the UK and chair of the committee tasked with developing the legally binding treaty, this month put forward an alternative draft he dubbed a “non-document” — made up, chiefly, of measures delegates have agreed on, but which campaigners have denounced as “weak”.
This non-document “reflects the lowest common denominator of ambition, and neglects the demands of all countries in the room”, reckons the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, an alliance of 1,000 grassroots groups and NGOs. The new text does not include binding controls on plastic production, dangerous chemicals, or provisions to make the treaty mandatory.
During the Ottawa talks, the US aligned with China and Saudi Arabia to block the inclusion of any requirement to reduce new plastic production. However, in August, US President Joe Biden’s administration backtracked, indicating that it would support a limit on new plastics.
Since the election of Donald Trump, though, the US’s position is unclear.
“If the US were to join us in the High Ambition Coalition, that would be a very, very strong signal,” says Tvinnereim. “Right now, it’s difficult to narrow down where we might see a solution in Busan.”
Businesses, meanwhile, have formed their own coalitions and have lobbied alongside campaigners for a more ambitious treaty that would include stricter measures to limit plastic waste, such as extended producer responsibility (EPR). This would require producers to shoulder the financial, and physical, responsibility for disposing of waste.
Faced with a torrent of diverging international regulation on packaging — as well as the risk that campaigners and states take legal action over the environmental and health impacts of plastic pollution — some companies see global alignment as worth pursuing.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a UK charity that campaigns to cut plastic pollution through a circular economy, says companies are making progress. The organisation has convened a group of multinationals, which collectively represent a fifth of the global plastic packaging market, in a “global commitment” to cut waste.
Signatories have doubled their use of recycled content in four years, says Rob Opsomer, executive lead for plastics and finance at the foundation. He adds that they have redesigned much of their packaging to improve its recyclability, and to increase the value for recycling companies looking to sell the material back into the packaging market.
“Businesses want the treaty and have solutions ready to be rolled out,” Opsomer says. “What we need is governments to find agreement on the way forward and to pave the way for the implementation of a robust treaty with global rules.”
In the EU, incoming regulation to tackle plastic and other types of packaging waste will shift the responsibility for dealing with it on to the companies that produce it.
The bloc’s revised Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive, an update of a 1994 regulation, is expected to come into force next year. Under it, every EU country must introduce EPR schemes that will achieve a 5 per cent reduction in waste by 2030, and a 15 per cent reduction by 2040.
Lawmakers have also agreed to make all packaging reusable or recyclable by 2030, and to ban some single-use packaging, such as lightweight plastic bags and condiment sachets, by the same year.
Europe currently produces about 180kg of packaging waste per person per year, a burden that Brussels expects to increase by 19 per cent overall — and by 46 per cent for plastic packaging — by 2030 if no action is taken.
“If the producers do not pay for the collection and handling of their discarded products, the cost is still there and will have to be paid for by local governments, taxpayers or by nature in the form of pollution, and damage to the world’s wildlife,” says Tove Andersen, chief executive of Norwegian recycling company Tomra.
The Oslo-listed company manufactures “reverse vending machines” for deposit return schemes (DRS), which incentivise consumers to recycle more by paying back a levy charged on bottles when they are returned.
The company says it has installed more than 85,000 machines in 60 markets, capturing 46bn cans and bottles a year. Norway’s DRS for beverage containers has led to a 90 per cent increase in collections, with 80 per cent of PET (polyethylene terephthalate, a type of plastic) bottles recycled into new bottles.
But one of the biggest obstacles to increasing the world’s recycling capacity is the availability and price of recycled material. To transform a used plastic bottle into material that can then be made into a new bottle takes the additional cost of sorting, cleaning and processing — processes that are not necessary in the production of virgin plastic.
The price of recycled plastic half a decade ago was considerable cheaper than its virgin counterpart. However, as the supply of new plastic has overtaken demand, the price of virgin plastic has plummeted.
A steep increase in petrochemical production in China and the US has led to a global oversupply of industrial chemicals used in plastics, such as ethylene. Ethylene capacity rose nearly 42mn tonnes last year compared with 2019, while global demand grew by only about 14mn tonnes, according to the International Energy Agency.
“The implementation of EPR on packaging would create a stable funding source for waste collection and recycling, unaffected by the changing prices of recycled materials,” argues Tomra’s Andersen. “This stability could support more effective waste management systems, and stabilise the affordability of recycled options.”
Governments that have attempted to implement EPR, however, have been subject to intense lobbying by companies seeking to water down or defer regulation. In the UK, food brands have repeatedly lobbied to delay the implementation of an EPR scheme, arguing that businesses are not ready and it could push up consumer prices.
Meanwhile, campaigners say EPR alone will not go far enough to tackle the oversupply of plastic in the world, and subsequent waste crisis.
“If negotiators hope to achieve a successful outcome, then firm commitments to reduce plastic production must be at the heart of discussions,” says Christina Dixon, ocean campaign leader at the Environmental Investigation Agency, an NGO.
Tvinnereim, meanwhile, says she is “a little bit frustrated” that there has not been more progress. “I think we have to recognise that we’re not going to get a treaty that gives us what we need to end plastic pollution anytime soon,” she says.
“But we might get an agreement that can give us a good start.”
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