Plastics treaty must avoid climate mistakes, UNEP leader says

The head of the United Nations agency organizing the plastics treaty talks is warning countries that the agreement needs firm targets and control measures, or it risks repeating mistakes that have weakened climate pacts like the Paris Agreement.

Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, made the plea Sept. 19 to an audience of diplomats at a side event of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, urging them not to postpone hard decisions in the plastics treaty until later technical rounds.

"It took us 21 years to get to Paris, and we still don't have a price on carbon," Andersen said. "We do not have 21 years to agree on something more detailed, so this one, it has to have the targets, it has to have the control measures, and it has to has to have the holistic span for the 193 countries so that it can work.

"Let us not say let's agree on something in general and have these things later on; that is not the way to go," she said. "This treaty … will not be a broad framework where we say let's have the protocols later on."

Andersen spoke at an event organized by the Nordic Council, a coordinating body for Scandinavian governments, where the council released a report on 15 policy interventions the treaty should have, like virgin plastic fees, bans, reuse targets and extended producer responsibility. The council's report said those steps collectively could reduce mismanaged plastics by 90 percent by 2040, and it estimated they would also reduce annual virgin resin production by 30 percent by 2040 compared with a 2019 baseline.

It said there would be corresponding growth in recycled plastics. It noted, however, that even deeper cuts in virgin plastic production would be needed to meet the world's climate warming limits under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

"I think the key finding for me from this analysis is the fact that most member states want to end plastic pollution by 2040," said Yoni Shiran, the author of the report and plastics lead at consulting firm Systemiq. "But at the same time, the control measures being put forward by many member states are not ambitious enough to deliver on that target."

The Nordic Council, whose members generally favor a more ambitious treaty, released its report to influence the next round of talks in November at UNEP headquarters in Kenya.

The Sept. 19 event featured diplomats, executives from multinational companies and environmental groups taking the stage to outline what they want to accomplish in Kenya, which will be the first formal session since the UN released detailed draft text of the treaty in early September.

An executive from consumer products maker Mars Inc. said multinational firms in the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty want harmonized worldwide rules to speed up their packaging transition.

"We need ambitious global measures that are legally binding to level the playing field and enable us to move faster, so that we can redesign our products, so that we can redesign our packaging, faster," said Allison Lin, global vice president of packaging sustainability at Mars and, earlier in her career, an executive at plastic products maker Westfall Technik Inc. Lin was representing the business coalition. "As we've been working with governments throughout this plastics treaty discussion, they've been surprised that businesses want regulation.

"We said yes, but we want harmonized regulations because it's very inefficient the way we're doing things," Lin added. "It's very expensive to adhere to multiple EPR systems. It's inefficient to look at multiple design-for-recyclability guidelines. It's uncertain to look at what types of reuse policies will be put in place."

As speakers urged actions in the treaty, they also noted problems in implementing measures in some countries. A speaker from India, for example, noted challenges enforcing that government's national ban on single-use plastics. And a minister from the United Kingdom said a push there to tax plastic packaging with less than 30 percent recycled content has revealed an unexpected roadblock.

Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Therese Coffey told the event that the tax raised more money than expected, about $350 million, in its first year, which she suggested was a negative because it meant companies were finding it more economical to pay the tax than use recycled content.

"It's actually sadly more than we were expecting to take in," she said. "I have been speaking to CFOs or sustainability vice presidents. Some companies are prepared to pay the tax, CFOs would say, because it's cheaper than what they're trying to do."

Coffey, who has a doctorate in chemistry and once worked for Mars Inc., said she knows plastic functions well as a material.

"I'm very conscious that plastic — the reason it's lasted — is because it's flipping good. And the challenge is how do we replace it," she said.

She said companies need to innovate around packaging and materials; she said countries are in parallel working on the finer points of the treaty. Coffey noted, for example, that her government and Brazil are co-hosting technical dialogues around chemicals and polymers of concern in the draft treaty's language. But she also acknowledged that disagreements remain between governments like the U.K., which is part of a "high ambition" coalition of 60 nations, and those that favor a treaty that's more flexible toward national conditions.

Those differences threatened to derail the previous round of treaty talks in Paris in early June.

"I know that there are some countries who are concerned about the legally binding element of this and perhaps are pedaling a bit more slowly than we would like," she said.

Speakers highlighted elements they would like in a treaty. A representative from Finland, for example, said the treaty should have guidelines to define what is a sustainable plastic.

"I would love to see some international sustainability criteria for plastics," said Timo Jaatinen, state secretary to Finland's minister of climate and the environment. "But having said that, we know that there are so many different kinds of polymers and that's an ambitious target."

The foreign minister of Antigua and Barbuda, E.P. Chet Greene, noted concerns over health.

"We have heard from scientists and public health experts that we must take swift and collective action," he said. "With regard to human health, the scenario is chilling. We know that toxins in plastic, including endocrine-disrupting chemicals, are likely linked to infertility, diabetes, prostate and breast cancers, thyroid problems, and increased risk of cardiovascular diseases and stroke."

Environmental groups talked about upstream control measures on fossil-based plastics as part of larger decarbonization efforts, and they said the treaty negotiators should zero in on what year will serve as a data baseline, mentioning 2019, 2020 or 2024.

"Whatever the metrics are, we need to identify what that global target is, a time frame for reaching peak plastic production, and then a schedule for reducing it down to sustainable levels from a global perspective," said Tim Gabriel, a lawyer with the U.K.-based Environmental Investigation Agency.

"From there, we can then look at what sort of national targets or commitments or reductions are appropriate," he said. "There'll be differences of views. Some will want globally agreed national targets or reductions, and some will want nationally determined contributions, somewhat similar to the Paris Agreement."

Lin said Mars and the Business Coalition would like to see the measures in the Nordic report in the treaty. A key learning of the report, she said, is that the 15 policies outlined are all linked and it's hard to isolate some as a better return on investment than others.

"To reduce plastic production, we need to look at reuse measures, we need to look at recycling, we need to look at eco-modulated EPR," Lin said. "They're all very tightly linked."