US seeks middle ground in deeply divided plastics treaty talks

Orlando, Fla. — The U.S. government doesn't want to join "factions" in the global plastics treaty talks. Instead, it aims to bridge the contentious gaps over what the agreement should require, an American diplomat told a plastics industry conference.

U.S. State Department negotiator Elizabeth Nichols told the event that Washington sees itself occupying a spot between the High Ambition Coalition — a group of 50-plus nations that want the treaty to articulate bolder goals like restraining plastics production — and countries that want more flexibility.

"We don't want to join a faction here," Nichols told an American Chemistry Council conference June 28 in Orlando. "I think we can bring these groups together because we are practical, we're realistic, and we have a position also that brings in both sides."

Those differences threatened to derail the last round of negotiations in Paris in late May, holding up talks for two full days of the five workdays at the second meeting the intergovernmental negotiating committee, known as INC-2.

Oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia raised procedural objections that observers saw as a proxy for arguments about giving countries flexibility, even if some in Congress say that openness will produce a treaty that's too weak.

"I think what we have known but was made very clear for everybody at INC-2 is there is a very large number of countries over here who want a range of different things, but they include exclusively voluntary approaches and they include a lot of sensitivity to these prescriptive ideas about bans or restrictions on polymers or products or additives," said Nichols, who was at the talks in Paris.

"And they are pretty ready for their voice to get heard and a process to be shown to them to demonstrate that they can trust it," Nichols said. "I don't think they felt like that was happening. And so they put their foot down and they used some procedural meanderings to make that point."

Nichols added that the U.S. government and the coalition members both share the same overarching goal of ending plastic pollution by 2040. The coalition includes major U.S. allies and plastics trading partners like Canada, Germany, Japan and Mexico.

But she told attendees at the ACC conference on chemical recycling that the U.S. "can play a bridge-builder role in the INC because we are not a part of the HAC."

"We occupy kind of a middle-of-the-road path," Nichols said.

Some in Congress, however, accuse President Joe Biden's administration of not being ambitious enough in the treaty and sidling up with countries that want a weaker deal.

"Right now, I believe the U.S. is pushing to not have binding targets and for a set of, if you will, a kind of happy talk about what could possibly be achieved," said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., at a July 27 congressional hearing. "But that won't get us there."

Merkley and Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., sent a letter to Biden May 25 saying they were disappointed his administration was not aligning with the High Ambition Coalition and its push for mandatory standards.

Instead, the U.S. was "aligning with petrostates like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and big polluters like the People's Republic of China, who are trying to hold the process back or are pushing for a weak structure built around nationally determined contributions," they wrote.

They said voluntary national plans will not be ambitious enough and such approaches haven't worked in other global environmental agreements.

"We are painfully aware that the United States Congress is divided and that the prospect for passing ambitious action through Congress in the near term is small," Merkley and Huffman wrote.

"Rather than using our divisions as a justification for holding the world back, the United States must recognize the severity of this crisis and leverage the opportunities available through executive authority and push for a majority-based process that will allow for a high-ambition agreement," the representatives said.

Nichols, a former college biology professor turned State Department diplomat specializing in the circular economy and environmental finance, told the ACC audience that the U.S. government believes a nationally driven approach in the treaty will lead to more innovation.

"To the extent, from the U.S. view at least, that we can have kind of a nationally driven approach, we think that's going to foster a lot more innovation," she said. "I think the U.S. will specifically thrive in that context.

"I think we've seen too many times that the innovative solutions that unstick really tricky problems, they're not coming from us," Nichols said. "They're coming from a private sector that's got what it needs to thrive. And I think, particularly for plastics, we could do well to remember that."

She questioned whether enough countries would agree to the more prescriptive approaches advocated by some nations. The coalition, for example, wants binding provisions restricting "problematic" plastics and eliminating microplastics releases, among other measures.

"They want to do it with a set of measures that we don't think a large number of countries can or will agree to," Nichols said, arguing that the U.S. wants to take a practical approach.

"The specifics that I see is that the U.S. has a very centrist, practical, real-deal, rubber-meets-road, how-do-we-actually-fix-the-problem kind of perspective," she said. "Sometimes people think that's unambitious, but it's not helpful to promise things we can't actually follow through on. That's how you undercut environmental work — full stop."

Nichols, though, said the plastics treaty will need better financial mechanisms to mitigate pollution than global climate treaties have had, but she conceded it's not a given that it will.

"It's … not inevitable that we do a better job this time of financing plastics pollution mitigation solutions as a set than we funded or have financed or thought about climate change mitigation, because the climate change financing … it's pretty difficult," she said. "They're pretty difficult conversations."

ACC also sees financing as "the biggest hurdle in the global agreement negotiations," said Stewart Harris, ACC's senior director of global plastics policy, in comments moderating Nichols' presentation.

Nichols said treaty action around standards and data collection will be important but they remain among the stickier topics and that, similar to finance, treaty outcomes are not inevitable.

"We hear a lot of interest, typically from brands who are using plastics to move and package their products, that a global approach to absolutely standardized regulation would really help them level the playing field before things get imbalanced," she said. "I think that's absolutely understandable, and at the same time you can generate a lot of absolutely unintended consequences through that rush towards modernizing, in a mandatory way, any particular system."

Nichols said there's also a lot of data that needs to be gathered in the treaty process, but she said countries and negotiating parties are still working through what is needed.

The disputes over production caps in the treaty could impact data discussions, she suggested.

"Production data is a good question," she said. "We don't want to encourage, in the context of this negotiation, those countries that want to put down production caps or phaseouts or phasedowns.

"At the same time, that data would be incredibly helpful," Nichols said. "So right now, we're looking at how do we strike the right balance."

ACC's Harris said industry is also concerned that data it provides could be used against it, noting the significant amount of money the private sector is investing to clean up plastic waste.

"Many of our member companies started the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, and for a time it was the largest investment, the largest commitment — multinational development bank or otherwise — it was the largest investment," Harris said. "We know that appetite is out there. But as you said, there's also a little bit of fear that the data can come back and be used against us."

Nichols also issued a plea to industries to transparently report information on their investments to make plastics more circular, saying it would help build a base of knowledge for smarter investments.

"If I could make a direct call to action, I think we would really love to think that we could stand up a system that would invite, without fear, companies that are in finance or that are parts of the life cycle or that are brands, to commit to telling some [organizing] body, probably one that they manage, how much they're investing towards the solutions," Nichols said.

"The private sector is kind of carrying this transition or change as we're going to call it, toward more sustainable use of plastics, but those data are absolutely invisible," she said.

The lack of data comes up, she said, when countries approach other nations that are traditional donors and seek funding and resources.

"We say things like the private sector does a lot of this, and we have nothing to show them," Nichols said. "We would like a system of financial transparency, not like disclosure, not tell us how much plastic is moving through your system so we can eventually get the SEC [U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission] on it.

"The opposite from that: How much are you doing that's helpful?" she said, saying it could show "how much the private sector is carrying this agreement."

"Maybe that's very Pollyanna of me but I think it's possible," Nichols said. "That would be so powerful."

Data gathered from private investors and from intergovernmental groups like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are starting to show money flow around plastic waste, and more importantly, highlighting areas for improvement, she said.

"They're painting a picture of where all the multilateral and bilateral public official development assistance money is flowing," she said. "That's been so revealing because there are certain areas that receive a lot of money that could pay for it themselves but aren't.

"There are places that are not remotely receiving enough money," she said, noting projections of plastics use skyrocketing in sub-Saharan Africa, India and Southeast Asia.

"Data would let you prioritize not just where, but what and when," Nichols said. "There can be actual strategy in this. We could fix this for less money, faster, if we thought strategically about where we put it and why."

Her comments are among the more extensive remarks U.S. diplomats have made at industry events.

In March, the leader of the U.S. negotiating team, a Biden appointee who has since left the State Department, told a recycling conference that the treaty could improve the "abysmal" plastics recycling rate in the country and address concerns about toxic chemicals in plastics.

Nichols said more data and transparency around additives and polymers would also be "really great" and she urged that more scientific information be available on how polymers perform.

"I think that transparency there will be helpful but there are limits, right?" she said. "We don't want that transparency so that we can start to track additives and polymers through systems.

"For those that propose this kind of thing, I don't think they understand how much work that is, how expensive that is, for industry and for governments, and how static and ultimately unhelpful those kinds of data sets are," she said.

As well, Nichols said it would help negotiators to have analyses of what works and what doesn't for extended producer responsibility programs and deposit return systems, or bottle bills.

In the U.S., she noted, the four states that have passed EPR for packaging laws each are taking different approaches.

"Some kind of comparative data in EPR and DRS [deposit return scheme], that's good, about what works and what doesn't, would be incredibly helpful," she said.

Nichols was among more than 1,500 diplomats and observers who gathered at the Paris INC session from May 29 to June 2. Plastics News explored the different takes in the treaty in a series of podcasts from the Paris meeting.

A third INC session is planned for Kenya in November, and diplomats organizing the INC plan to release the first draft of treaty language this fall. Negotiators will then work with that language in Kenya.

She told the plastics industry gathering that she believes the treaty can be effective.

"It has to be inclusive, and profoundly so," she said. "If we learn what is necessary, and you tell us what's possible, and we've got some of the levers, and that conversation continues, we could fix this. And we should. And we can."

Nichols said U.S. negotiators meet with stakeholders on all sides of the treaty and in trying to balance different interests, "we're probably disappointing someone on every stakeholder call."

"We had really wonderful conversations with Greenpeace, for example, all over INC and after," she said. "It's a really healthy process to have room for these discussions, to get called out, to get called in. And we can just keep trying to iterate towards the right solution. But yeah, we successfully disappoint everyone."