175 countries commit to creating plastics pollution treaty

The United Nation's top environmental body agreed March 2 to move forward on a global plastics pollution treaty, setting in motion talks that could have a major impact on how plastics are regulated and used around the world.

Countries will now spend two years negotiating details of the treaty, but diplomats meeting at the U.N. Environment Assembly in Kenya said their decision marked a big step toward controlling plastics pollution and putting in place stronger laws to make plastics more circular.

"The bottom line is we will eliminate plastics pollution from our environment," said Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program. "[We] need to bring the private sector into the room, because the private sector, after all, are the producers of plastics."

The talks will hash out specifics like financing mechanisms for more waste collection, national targets and goals around product design.

"We need to talk about whether, and how, we measure the degree of circularity," Andersen said at a UNEA news conference as talks concluded. "We'll need to have a conversation about whether we should have some goals for reduced raw polymers in the production chain."

The UNEA decision, which was approved by delegations from nearly 200 countries participating, drew praise from both environmental groups and industry representatives in Nairobi for the talks.

Plastics groups said they liked that the broad mandate of the U.N.'s framework document guiding the talks gives flexibility to countries on how they implement the treaty.

The International Council of Chemical Associations, which includes the American Chemistry Council, said in a statement that it was pleased with the outcome of the UNEA meeting and supports a legally binding treaty.

It said it appreciated governments for "highlighting the significant role plastics play in society."

Environmental groups also said they saw a historic win in the UNEA decision, since negotiators will broadly consider the life cycle of plastics, including fossil fuel extraction and production, rather than focusing only on waste in the environment.

"We are using a lot of unnecessary plastic," said Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International, in a side event March 2 at the UNEA meeting. "Particularly, production of virgin plastic has to be a part of the focus of a treaty."

Statements from both industry and nongovernmental organizations attending the meeting pointed to other areas of disagreement likely to surface in the detailed talks.

The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, for example, said it wants to keep chemical recycling technologies out of the treaty, while plastics industry groups consider it a key way to recycle much larger amounts of plastic waste.

As well, plastics industry groups including ACC have argued against plastic production caps being included in any agreement.

But some global consumer product brands have publicly supported a treaty looking at reducing virgin plastics production.

Ed Shepherd, senior global sustainability manager at Unilever plc, told a March 2 UNEA panel that the low cost of virgin plastic hurts its ability to meet environmental goals.

He said Unilever has increased its plastic recycled content levels from 1 percent in 2018 to 11 percent in 2020, but he said long-term progress could be hurt by the economics of virgin resin.

"The artificially low price of virgin plastic inhibits our progress, disrupting the business model to collect and process plastic and reducing our ability to innovate," he said. "Should virgin plastic production continue unchecked, we fundamentally will not be able to deliver the vision of this [treaty]."

At the closing news conference, Andersen and other U.N. officials pointed to systems in place like taxes that some countries have put on virgin plastics to make recycling more attractive, as well as container deposits to boost collection.

Many of the details of implementing a treaty will rest with national action plans that governments draw up. But NGOs said they welcomed language in the U.N. treaty framework highlighting the health impacts of plastics, environmental justice and the climate impact of increasing virgin resin production.

As well, they said the U.N. resolution includes provisions recognizing for the first time the role and needs of "waste pickers," people who try to earn a living collecting discarded materials.

Industry groups, for their part, said UNEA's action supported the role of plastics and the industry's commitment to circularity goals like a mandatory 30 percent recycled content in plastic products.

"Plastic waste pollution is unacceptable in any environment," said Markus Steilemann, president of PlasticsEurope and CEO of materials giant Covestro. "The UNEA resolution represents a major step towards the creation of a waste free future which is critical to achieving our collective climate ambitions. The resolution also recognizes the vital role that plastic applications play in society, which is welcome."

Senior UNEA representatives and others at the meeting predicted that the treaty talks will lead to more focus on additives used in plastics and their impact on recycling, as more reclaimed polymers are used in new products.

Rolph Payet, the head of U.N.'s Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, told the meeting that his organization has been looking at plastics additives as part of its work on persistent organic pollutants.

"These are sophisticated chemicals that have been added to plastics to give it certain properties, but they are dangerous chemicals," Payet said. "We need to find ways of moving them out and replacing them with alternatives."

Related to that, the UNEA meeting also voted to establish a new U.N. panel on science policy for the management of chemicals, waste and pollution prevention.

The outgoing president of UNEA, Norwegian diplomat Espen Barth Eide, told journalists that there's a link between the new science panel and the plastics treaty "because some of the ways that toxic chemicals travel around are in plastic."

Eide, who is Norway's climate and environment minister, said he had his blood tested ahead of the UNEA meeting and that "one of the most clear finds" were softening agents used in plastics, that he said are linked to health problems.

"In order to bring plastics into the circular economy, we have to make sure that the hazardous chemicals that are sometimes associated with plastics, that are used for some types of colorants … are actually phased out so that the plastics that is produced can be recycled safely," he said.