Some countries will be pushing for the plastics treaty to include a fee on plastics, potentially up to $100 a ton, to fund environmental cleanup and recycling, when the talks restart in Canada April 23.
It's not clear if the agreement will ultimately include such fees, but a diplomat from Ghana made a case for them during an April 16 webinar to address how the treaty could raise the estimated $17 trillion needed to build infrastructure for waste management, recycling and plastic pollution cleanup worldwide.
"I think it's the only way we are going to be able to get additional funding that will be required to meet the obligations or meet the objectives of the treaty," said Oliver Boachie, special advisor to the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation in Ghana, during a webinar organized by The Circulate Initiative, the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and others.
"We need to extend that 'polluter pays' principle to cover the polymer producers whose products end up in all markets across the globe," he said. "We are asking them to make very, very limited contributions, not more than $100 per ton of polymer products. … We call on all member states to consider it very, very seriously."
Other diplomats on the webinar did not specifically comment on the call for a plastics fee, but several said the scope of the financial challenges around plastics would require new thinking.
An official with the U.S. State Department, Elizabeth Nichols, noted that plastics fees have been raised in previous rounds of the talks, including from a group of negotiators from Africa.
The fourth round of treaty negotiations will be held from April 23-29 in Ottawa, Ontario. Officials on the webinar said Ghana, the U.S., the Netherlands and other countries have formed a finance working group within the treaty talks.
The webinar delved into the details of how a plastics agreement could raise the $1.5 trillion in public funds and $15.4 trillion in private investment that a report from Nordic countries estimated would be needed worldwide by 2040 to reduce plastic in the environment by 90 percent and fund circular systems.
The wide-ranging webinar looked at a variety of funding mechanisms, including extended producer responsibility programs on packaging as well as traditional global and regional financial instruments run by the World Bank and others.
"We're going to need a massive amount of money, realigning financing flows on a global scale," said Floske Kusse, head of stakeholder engagement and global sustainability at ING Bank.
The idea of plastic fees have come up in other treaty forums, including open forums in late March for other groups to offer their input to negotiators.
Some nongovernmental organizations there backed a fee but a business group representing bottled water makers noted that taxes had been discussed within the treaty and told diplomats they should reject levies on PET beverage containers.
Another diplomat on the webinar, while not endorsing specific taxes or financing plans in her comments, said the challenges in the treaty will require more than just public funds.
"We need to acknowledge that public funds are and will continue to be largely inadequate to fully implement our ambitions," said Jennefer Baarn, lead negotiator for the plastics treaty for the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management in the Netherlands. "We will need to mobilize financial opportunities from all sources."
A key United Nations official in the talks, while not endorsing specific proposals, said it was clear that traditional methods of public financing for global environmental initiatives would not be enough.
"We have to look at a whole different set of measures that will allow us to get where we want in the implementation of this instrument," said Jyoti Mathur-Filipp, head of the U.N. unit, the intergovernmental negotiating committee, overseeing the administration of the plastics talks.
She said the current draft treaty text — a catch-all listing that has yet to reject any potential options — includes plastics fees as well as funding from traditional global financial instruments.
One analysis suggested that most of the private funding for plastics recycling has gone to wealthier countries, but said the needs are strongest in developing nations.
A study from the OECD presented on the webinar said that 89 percent of the private investment in recycling and waste management went to North American and Europe, while 85 percent of the mismanaged waste was in developing economies.
"There's a need for both efficient finance and for finance to have better targeting to support action in the Global South," said Shardul Agrawala, head of the Environment and Economy Integration Division in the OECD.
Boachie, the Ghanian diplomat, urged countries to support those traditional financial instruments, and also suggested the treaty should develop baseline criteria for extended producer responsibility programs and help developing countries implement EPR.
He said he welcomed companies like Coca-Cola Co. and Unilever plc that have "embraced the polluter-pays principles" but said that should be expanded to plastics producers.
"We believe that these contributions to funding must come from those whose economic activities lead to the creation of products that pollute the environment along their life cycle," Boachie said. "They cannot be voluntary contributions."