Treaty to reduce plastic waste elusive as ever

Photo Credit: Reuters

LAST week, representatives from 175 nations and 2,000 green organizations gathered in Paris to lay the groundwork for an international, legally binding treaty on plastic pollution.

The conference, which involves the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for Plastics, had its share of “nitpicking” and “delaying tactics,” but in the end, a decision was reached to come up with a “zero draft” of the treaty before the committee meets again next year.

It’s not much to show, but considering that the global campaign to reduce plastic waste has been moving at a glacial pace, the decision could be a breakthrough of sorts.

For the longest time, nobody cared about how much plastic waste the world has been producing. It took a while before we realized that throwaway plastic materials were filling up landfills, polluting beaches, and had even formed a floating artificial island of garbage in the Pacific Ocean.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) estimates that the world produces more than 430 million tons of plastic annually, two-thirds of which are discarded as waste.

If the trend is not reversed, plastic waste will almost triple by 2060, and only a fifth of it will be recycled, warned the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The OECD also says plastic waste accounts for more than 3 percent of global emissions in 2019.

More recently, a new menace has been raising serious concern: microplastics.

Microplastics have been ingested by fish and sea mammals like the blue whale, which is said to consume up to 10 million pieces of microplastic every day.

Microplastics have also become a public health concern, having been detected in human blood, breast milk and placentas.

The Paris conference provides a glimpse of why it’s so difficult to reach an agreement on tackling plastic waste.

“A large majority of the countries have expressed a need for binding specific obligations to end plastic pollution,” one participant noted. The resistance comes from a bloc of large plastics producer nations — including Saudi Arabia, China and India — who want the treaty approved by consensus, not by voting.

The representative from Greenpeace said it was clear “that oil-producing countries and the fossil fuel industry will do everything in their power to weaken the treaty and delay the process.”

There was also a deep division between countries calling for limits to plastic production and the petrochemical industry which advocates recycling as the solution to plastic waste.

A 55-nation coalition wanted a strong treaty that includes restrictions on certain hazardous chemicals and a ban on hard-to-recycle plastics products.

There was also a group espousing “circularity,” or keeping already-produced plastic items in circulation as long as possible.

Key areas for action

Even before the conference opened, the UN Environment Program, which is hosting the talks, came up with a blueprint for cutting plastic waste by 80 percent by 2040. The UNEP identified three key areas of action: reuse, recycling and reorientation of plastic packaging to alternative materials.

Some green groups saw the blueprint as a concession to the global plastics and petrochemicals industry.

“Real solutions to the plastics crisis will require global controls on chemicals in plastics and significant reductions in plastic production,” argued the advisor with the International Pollutants Elimination Network.

For Greenpeace, what the world needs “is an international plastic treaty, one that regulates production, one that addresses pollution from its very source.”

It is safe to say that given the obstacles to be overcome, the world will not be looking at a treaty on plastic waste soon. Perhaps now is a good time to consider another paramount issue: many people do not realize — or choose to ignore — the impact of plastic waste on their lives.

Such an attitude surfaced in a recent consumer research study which found that many consumers in Southeast Asia consider recycling plastic bottles as an inconvenience, even though a significant majority agree that the bottles present a pressing environmental problem.

The respondents cite as reasons lack of easy access to recycling areas, insufficient storage space for recyclables and a habit of disposing rather than recycling.

Changing attitudes could be as big a challenge as hammering out a treaty. Maybe even bigger.

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