Bonjour! Plastics News is going to the plastics treaty talks in Paris next week.
It's the second of five rounds of negotiations, spread over the next two years, and Steve Toloken from our team will be there, amid the throngs of an estimated 2,700 diplomats and observers from industry, civil society and other groups (and oh yeah, journalists).
Much of what any agreement could say is still to be determined, but industry will be there in much larger numbers than at the first round in November in Uruguay.
Some of that may be the lure of Paris, but the talks are moving very quickly by the pace of an international agreement. A third session is planned in Kenya later this year.
At this point, everything's on the table: producer responsibility, production caps, recycled content, health impacts from additives, lists of "problematic" plastics and calls from industry to weigh environmental impacts of other materials.
Look for reports on what different groups are doing and a series of multimedia interviews from the talks in the weeks after. (And thanks to Steve for not only covering the talks but also writing this part of today's Kickstart.)