Consumer brands push for tougher plastics treaty language

A coalition of some of the biggest buyers of plastics — and the industry's biggest customers — say they plan to push for a more aggressive global plastics treaty at negotiations in Paris in late May.

The group, which includes Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc., Unilever plc and Walmart Inc., wants to see reductions in virgin plastic production language in the treaty, as well as support for stronger extended producer responsibility laws, reusable packaging and recyclability.

The statements from the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty at an April 27 virtual briefing shows the ambitious and fluid nature of the talks, particularly with major plastics users endorsing ideas like virgin resin production limits that make many in the plastic industry nervous.

"We're looking at the treaty as an opportunity to bring harmonized legislation forward," said Jodie Roussell, global public affairs lead for packaging and sustainability at food and beverage maker Nestlé SA, speaking for the consumer goods coalition.

One of those areas, she said, would be "in reduction of virgin plastic production."

That's not a new position for the coalition, but Roussell did outline three new areas where the coalition wants the treaty — organized under the United Nations — to take stronger positions in Paris: on reuse and refill standards, recyclability and EPR.

Participants at the April 27 meeting reviewed an April 13 U.N. draft report listing options for the treaty.

Related: Draft of US plastics strategy focuses on health impacts, microplastics and recycling

"We're looking particularly at an expansion of reuse and how it will be addressed in the treaty, particularly options around reuse infrastructure," Roussell said. "We're looking at specific phase-in timelines and standards that would need to be applied to facilitate shared packaging infrastructure. There's a lot to discuss here."

On recyclability standards, she suggested the business group wants discussions to focus on what can be recycled on a large scale, rather than only whether something is recyclable from a technical standpoint.

"We're happy there's been a discussion around technical recyclability but we think the movement needs to be toward recyclability in practice and at scale," she said. "We need to look at how recyclability can be mandated by design."

And on EPR, she said the coalition, which includes financial institutions as well as a few packaging companies, believes the U.N. draft document should be more ambitious, including putting EPR in a "fully fledged annex" in the treaty.

She said companies that operate globally are concerned about meeting too many different EPR laws for packaging around the world. She told the group that national EPR laws are growing rapidly, from 58 in January to 65 in April.

"It's a formidable challenge and this treaty offers us ultimately the opportunity to put in place harmonized legislation that will do the right thing for the environment and will enable business to comply and partner in solutions," she said. "That's what extended producer responsibility systems, well-designed and implemented, can do."

"Our policy recommendations are showing that leading businesses in this space want a treaty with legally binding global rules and measures that are doing to drive change on a global scale," Roussell said.

The business coalition includes a few large plastic packaging makers like Amcor Ltd., Alpla and AptarGroup Inc., as well as resin maker Borealis AG.

There are signs that plastics industry participation in the Paris talks is growing, compared with the first round in Uruguay in November.

The week long Paris meeting is the second of five sessions planned, with expectations to finish an agreement by late 2024. That's a fast timeline for an international agreement.

The Association of Plastic Recyclers has said it will be at the talks as a delegate for the first time, and there are signs that other plastics business groups are similarly gearing to join, for the first time, an estimated 1,800 diplomats and representatives from civil society and industry in Paris.

Board members and senior executives at the Washington-based Plastics Industry Association met in mid-April with the top two U.S. diplomats involved in the talks, including Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs Monica Medina, who had addressed a plastics recycling conference in March.

The plastics association said about 20 senior industry executives participated in the closed-door meeting with Medina and the diplomat leading the U.S. team, Larke Williams. The discussion was held as part of the group's board meeting in Washington.

"I was very impressed with the candor of our speakers and guests, the clarity with which they expressed their goals, and their willingness to work with industry leaders to achieve ambitious targets to eliminate plastic pollution from the environment," said Matt Seaholm, president and CEO of the plastics association.

Plastics industry groups were not part of the April 27 webinar organized by a U.N.-affiliated group, the Geneva Environment Network, but the head of the American Chemistry Council's plastics division told a Washington conference that the treaty is "one of the central topics of our time on how we address this."

Joshua Baca, ACC's vice president of plastics, told an April 26 climate summit organized by Foreign Policy magazine that proposals for banning or restricting plastic production would do great damage to U.S. industry.

"We would be going down a route very similar where we would deindustrialize, much like Europe is doing; kill jobs and innovation; and most importantly, the products we make today would be made in countries with lesser environmental standards," he said. "We have to weigh all that."

But he said a global treaty, which ACC supports, is vital to building waste management capacity worldwide and addressing challenges.

He said the agreement should be flexible to accommodate different countries with different needs. ACC sent Baca and other staff to the Uruguay session in November.

"We need appropriate standards; we need national action plans to do that," said Baca. "We need to make sure that we're incentivizing circularity, not regulating industry out of existence."