The world has a chance to end plastic pollution – the petrochemical giants mustn’t spoil it

Steve Fletcher

The UN global plastic treaty could be as important as the 2015 Paris accords, if negotiators can stand up to industry lobbyists

Mon 29 Apr 2024 06.00 EDT

Last week, in an enormous convention centre in downtown Ottawa, I joined delegates who have been negotiating over the most important environmental deal since the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change.

The global plastic treaty has a mandate to agree on a legally binding, international agreement to tackle plastic pollution across the entire plastics life cycle, from the initial extraction of fossil fuels for plastics production to the end-of-life disposal of plastic waste. The current meeting is the fourth of five scheduled negotiations and is critically important – without agreement on the objectives, structure and key measures, the prospect of agreeing on the final treaty text by the end of 2024 seems ambitious.

It was Inger Andersen, the UN Environment Programme executive director, who compared the deal to the Paris accords – and she’s right. The need to confront plastic pollution head-on is urgent because plastic pollution contributes to the three greatest global environmental crises of our time: the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and chronic pollution. The effects of plastic pollution on human health are becoming clearer. Plastic traces have been found in our blood and in human placenta, brain and lung tissue. They are known to increase the risk of health conditions, including cancer, diabetes, and neurodegenerative, cardiovascular and age-related diseases.

Plastic pollution is not only about plastic waste. Pollutants are released at all stages of the plastic life cycle, including extraction, manufacture, use and disposal. So far, efforts to tackle it have primarily focused on the disposal phase, through end-of-life waste management techniques, including better waste collection systems and the expansion of recycling, incineration and landfill capacity.

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