World agrees to tackle plastic pollution but production may still rise

Analysis: Global agreement offers hope but falls short of pledging to cut levels of new plastic, Liam James reports

Countries have agreed to tackle plastic pollution (AP)

Plastic pollution is said to be nearly as big a threat to the planet as climate change.

Warnings that plastics can take thousands of years to break down and are already causing untold damage to marine life have not as yet commanded the type of international action afforded to greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental catastrophes.

This is now set to change as the United Nations Environment Assembly on Wednesday passed a resolution signed by 175 countries that sets off negotiations for a global treaty to tackle rising plastic pollution.

The agreement promises legally binding rules on plastic waste by the end of 2024. The UN said the world had signed up to the most significant environmental deal since the 2015 Paris accord.

Two main proposals were on the table at the UN summit in Nairobi. One from Japan aimed at ocean plastic pollution and the other, pitched by Rwanda and Peru, looks to make plastic production and consumption more sustainable.

Jeanne d'Arc Mujawamariya, Rwanda's Minister of Environment, said the agreement to take forward the proposals was “a historic milestone in the global effort to prevent our planet from drowning in plastics.”

She added: “With plastic pollution getting worse every day, there is no time to waste, and we look forward to playing a role throughout the rest of the negotiations. Together let's foster a global solution for a global challenge!”

This step toward global action was no small feat and took a week of intense negotiations that went on late into the night.

But despite celebration among delegates there were signs that any final treaty would be watered down by pressure from the plastics industry against reducing production.

Reuters reported ahead of the summit that plastics industry bodies were planning to lobby delegates to steer discussions away from production restrictions. And governments remain open to lobbying during the two-year negotiation period.

Countries have agreed to make production more sustainable (Getty/iStock)

The agreed text of the resolution does not commit to reducing the amount of new plastic produced, instead calling for more sustainable design and manufacturing processes and reducing waste.

Plastics Europe, an industry body implicated in the Reuters report, said it was pleased with the resolution. A second industry source said the same.

The agreed measures will likely reduce waste, for instance by forcing companies to design out non-recyclable material such as PVC.

But the amount of new plastic produced every year is currently set to more than double to 2 billion tonnes by 2050 and it is hard to see that estimate going down while production is allowed to continue to grow.

Plastic life cycle can never be circular

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) had called for a global treaty in a report that warned that plastic pollution rivals climate change in terms of the danger posed to the planet.

The NGO, which investigates and campaigns against environmental crimes and abuse, wants countries to agree to intervene in all stages of the life cycle of plastic in order to reduce waste to a minimum.

The goal is circularity, a cycle of production ensuring that once plastic material is manufactured it is used, then reused again and again.

Christina Dixon, deputy campaign lead at the EIA who was in Nairobi for the summit, said: “We would like to see a prioritisation on designing products with safe and non-toxic circularity in mind, such as designing for reuse and recycling.”

The trouble with plastic circularity is that even with improvements in recyclability, new plastic will still need to be produced, a large amount of which will inevitably fall out of the cycle and go to waste.

UK plastic reduction targets for instance – those which almost all supermarkets have signed up to – account for this waste and concede that a massive amount of new plastic will continue to be made each year.

Lots of plastic that can be recycled still goes to waste (Getty)

The Wrap UK Plastics Pact sets goals for the packaging of consumer goods. One of the 2025 targets is for 100 per cent of plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable.

Even if the goal of perfect recyclability is met, Wrap still expects the amount of new plastic produced annually to be nearly 10 per cent higher than it was in 2017, before the pact was signed.

This is partly due to a disparity in the percentage of packaging that can be recycled and the percentage that can be made from recycled material – 100 per cent to 30 per cent.

Wrap said this disparity is unavoidable as many types of plastic packaging cannot contain any recycled material – wrappers that touch food for instance – meaning new plastic has to be made.

Consumer behaviour also plays a role: nowhere near all that can be put in the recycling bin, is put in the recycling bin.

Ms Dixon said while plastic production can never be perfectly circular, the EIA wants the UN treaty to bring forward measures to keep as much plastic moving in a cycle as possible.

She said: “We haven't solved the concept of plastic in a circular economy by any stretch. It's not an inherently circular material, which is why we need very strict standards on sustainability, toxicity, durability and reuse so we minimise the frequency with which we recycle.

“No one ever said plastic must be 100 per cent circular, nor can it ever be. No one ever said leakage will never occur or that it can be completely eliminated in every instance.

“But dramatic improvements are needed on both fronts to minimise leakage, which currently happens at all stages of the plastics lifecycle in all environments.”

She said ending the use of particularly toxic polymers in production and requiring countries to report on plastic production were feasible means of improving sustainability. The EIA would also like to see caps on plastic production, she said.