With US, EU backing, fees on virgin resin grow in treaty

Busan, South Korea — Support for a fee on virgin resin has gained momentum in the plastics treaty, with the United States, the European Union and Japan now backing the idea.

The plan, which was also supported by Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, was part of the final draft framework that negotiators unveiled Dec. 1, just hours before the latest round of talks in South Korea were suspended. The U.S. and EU proposal would allow nations to adopt "primary plastic polymer fees," along with extended producer responsibility systems and other financing, to meet their obligations to pay for the treaty.

There's no guarantee fees would be part of any final agreement, but the U.S. and EU proposal is the most prominent support that such virgin plastic levies have gotten in the negotiations.

The U.S. proposal doesn't set specific levels for the fee, leaving that for later, and it's voluntary.

It comes after Ghana, a longtime advocate for resin fees, submitted its own detailed proposal earlier in the talks, which were held Nov. 25 to Dec. 2 in the port city of Busan.

Ghana's plan called for countries to be required to set plastics fees and for some of the money to be distributed globally to help developing countries. Ghana's proposal did not discuss the amount of the fee, but a report prepared by the Minderoo Foundation estimates that a fee of $60-$90 per metric ton, or about 5-7 percent of the price of plastics, would generate about $30 billion a year globally.

In its statement, Ghana said there's a "large financing gap for developing countries" to pay for improved waste management and recycling, as well as develop reuse systems, alternative materials and other ways to reduce plastics in the environment.

Ghana said the cost of cleaning up legacy plastics pollution could be as high as $13 billion a year.

It's not clear whether a fee will wind up in the final treaty.

Major oil-producing countries have opposed restrictions on supply, such as caps on plastic production. As well, a group of global plastics producers at the talks, the International Council of Chemical Associations, said it does not see resin fees as an effective tool.

"We don't support a resin fee, but at the end of the day, national governments are going to have to determine how they want to engage and manage their own industry," ICCA spokesman Stewart Harris said in a Dec. 2 interview in Busan.

He pointed to the European Union putting a fee on nonrecyclable plastic as an example of the financing measures governments could take.

"National governments have a variety of tools available to them," he said. "We do not think a resin fee is an effective tool."

But the head of Ghana's delegation said during a Dec. 1 press conference in Busan that a fee on global plastics production would give developing countries resources to implement the treaty.

"Those who are producing those polymers and causing the pollution, [when] they contribute to the fees, they are really saying they are committed to the agreement," said Sam Adu-Kumi, lead negotiator for Ghana.

At the same press conference, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives called for countries to strengthen the treaty's funding mechanism, including with a polymer fee.

A researcher who prepared a resin fee report for the Minderoo Foundation said plastics fees should be in the treaty because EPR and other global financial tools will not provide enough money to properly address problems, including bringing waste management to the 2 billion-plus people in the world who don't have it.

"We're not going to get that from a combination of multilateral finance and EPR," said Joe Papineschi, chairperson of Eunomia Research & Consulting. "That's going to need to be topped up from other sources, and the plastic polymer fee idea is, to me, one of the best ideas on the table for how to do that."

In remarks at a Nov. 27 Minderoo Foundation event on the sidelines of the treaty talks, he said that consumer goods companies are supporting EPR, meaning they are calling to be regulated and to pay to improve recycling and waste management. But he said the public should put pressure on petrochemical companies to also pay, in the form of a resin fee.

"What the world needs is for citizens and consumers to be putting increasing pressure on the chemical and petrochemicals industry on this fee idea and other significant changes that those industries need to make," Papineschi said. He did say that any fee, if adopted, would be voluntary.

Even if the fee concept emerges in what is adopted in Busan, details would be determined later.

The Ghana proposal said the treaty's first implementation meeting, or Conference of Parties, would set some details on the fee. Ghana said the amount of any fees would be set by each country and would not be imposed by the treaty.

The fee idea has gotten support in other recent global negotiations. Barbados, France and Kenya included a resin fee mirroring Minderoo's proposal in a financing report at the recent climate COP climate summit in Azerbaijan.

The countries, which make up the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force, said a fee could have advantages over other revenue streams because there are relatively few virgin resin makers worldwide, and it said a levy could reduce economic imbalances that hurt recycled resin.