Kickstart: Long live the (plastics) King

As many in the United Kingdom and elsewhere remember the life of Queen Elizabeth II, royal watchers are wondering what changes King Charles III will bring to the throne.

Let us, as a media outlet from a long ago colony, offer one prediction: a heightened interest in plastics issues at Buckingham Palace.

The new monarch has long been vocal on the topic, saying in a 2018 speech at the British Academy that he had a “deep frustration” with the world not moving fast enough to address plastic waste in the ocean.

He’s been very involved. The British Plastics Federation noted that it met with then Prince Charles in 2017, at the launch of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy Innovation Prize.

The 73-year-old monarch gave his first major speech on the environment in 1970, when, as part of talking broadly about the need to rein in pollution, he criticized society for using non-returnable bottles and “indestructible plastic containers.”

He reflected in a 2020 interview that people felt he was “rather dotty, to say the least” to talk about those problems five decades ago.

Media reports suggest King Charles will tone down what he says publicly about the environment, in line with the modern monarchy's political neutrality.

But they also point out that traditionally, the King or Queen and the Prime Minister have met weekly for strictly confidential conversations. Those conversations could be “pretty lively,” one royal adviser told the Guardian newspaper.

In keeping with the international theme in today's Kickstart, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently visited a company in Indonesia that's gotten funding from plastics firms working on ocean waste.

Administrator Michael Regan was there in late August for a meeting of G20 environment ministers, when he stopped at PT Reciki Solusi Indonesia in Bali to look at its waste management efforts.

Reciki, which operates two material recovery facilities in Indonesia, received funding in late 2021 from Circulate Capital, an investment group that's financially backed by Dow Inc., Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. LLC and consumer brands.

Reciki plans to use the money to set up more MRFs. Circulate Capital said better waste management will help — 36 percent of Indonesia's plastics trash is currently managed by open burning, and that accounts for 91 percent of the country's carbon footprint from plastic waste.

The U.S. Agency for International Development also assisted in the financing.

And finally, an interesting podcast conversation with one of the world's better-known diplomats on plastics and the environment.

OK, maybe "better known" is a stretch. Maybe I should just say he is known to those of us who can nerd out on the topic.

Espen Barth Eide, Norway's climate minister and head of U.N. Environment Assembly meeting this year that started the plastics treaty talks, sat down with the Climate Pod to talk about the United Nations' focus on plastics, and the special urgency diplomats felt to show results in the face of the Russia-Ukraine war.

He talked about the differences between countries in the treaty talks, between those wanting a "high ambition" agreement looking broadly at plastics and those who preferred a voluntary agreement more limited to ocean waste.

Eide, who's also served as Norway's foreign minister, said the plastics treaty talks are happening in reverse to other global agreements he's been part of.

Usually, they start with very ambitious, high-minded statements that become whittled down, but the plastics discussions are moving in the opposite direction, he said.

"This one was exactly the opposite," he said. "It started as less ambitious and it grew in ambition level because the nations involved actually realized what I was just saying – you can't just deal with it at the end. You have to deal with the whole life cycle."

It's a wide ranging interview, with Eide talking about the current energy crisis, Norway ramping up natural gas production as it tries to move quickly away from gas-powered automobiles, and how in his opinion, the Russian invasion could lead to more international cooperation on climate.