Global plastics treaty will rely on national plans

It's likely that negotiators from about 190 countries will leave a major United Nations environment conference in early March with a mandate for a global treaty on plastics waste and pollution.

Over time, that could lead to major changes in how plastics are regulated. But some of the specific impacts are less clear.

The biggest concern of industry groups attending talks at the U.N. Environment Assembly in Kenya is that the treaty will try to limit virgin plastic production.

The likelihood of that happening, though, depends greatly on how countries structure their national action plans — where they tell the world what exactly they are willing to do.

National plans play a big role in other environmental treaties, like the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Those national plans were the basis of commitments that governments brought to the COP26 climate meeting in Scotland in November.

In the same way, national plastics plans are seen by both industry officials and environmental groups as an important element for any plastics treaty.

In effect, they would give national governments substantial control over how any pact is implemented within their borders.

"We think national action plans are a critical part of this," said Stewart Harris, senior director of global plastics policy at the American Chemistry Council in Washington. "Our vision really comes back to this idea of governments need flexibility. They should be driving the solutions toward the overall goal."

Plastics News spoke with industry and nongovernmental organization officials headed to a meeting of the United Nations Environment Assembly in Kenya Feb. 28 to March 2, where national delegations are expected to adopt the broad overall framework for a treaty.

That would be followed by several years of negotiations to hammer out details that countries would then consider.

After that, nations would develop action plans to translate the treaty's goals for their situations and bring them to regular meetings like last year's climate summit in Scotland.

"There is quite a lot of emphasis on national action plans, or plastics pollution prevention plans," said David Azoulay, director of environmental health for the Center for International Environmental Law.

"It's one of the central ideas of what the treaty could look like because it is one with which most of the governments are most comfortable with at this stage," said Azoulay, who is at the talks in Kenya. "The idea of a global legally binding approach is less threatening if you know whatever is adopted will be adjusted to the country's specificities and to the country's capacity."

The national action plans would not give countries complete flexibility. They would still be expected to align with the overall objectives of the treaty.

Negotiators in Kenya will be debating how broadly a treaty should focus — should it look narrowly at waste management or wider at topics like the plastics life cycle, climate impacts or environmental justice.

The treaty language could also aim to set up global rules to harmonize recycling systems, better define circular product design and provide financial help for waste management in developing countries, said Neil Tangri, science and policy director at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.

Tangri, who is also at the talks, said NGOs and some countries would also be pushing for the treaty to include language aimed at reducing virgin plastics production and use.

"The most ambitious element will be the reduction in virgin production, and I think this is where different ideas are being put forward," he said, including production caps, virgin plastic taxes, freezing facility expansions or enacting bans on single-use plastics.

Experts who have looked at existing national plastics plans say they vary a lot.

A December report from the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment looked at nine national plans — including those in Canada, China, Indonesia and Sweden — and said efforts range from general goals to detailed prescriptions for stronger waste collection, single-use bans, taxes and recycled-content mandates.

Even in North America, big differences have emerged in national approaches.

The Canadian government has declared some plastic products toxic and is moving ahead on nationwide single-use bans, while in Washington, there's no clear consensus on a national plastics waste policy.

Azoulay said he does not see the U.S. agreeing to a treaty with direct plastic production caps.

"I very much doubt that the U.S. would sign and ratify a treaty that would put a strong limit on its production capacity," he said, but argued the pact could take other, less direct steps, to try to curb plastics production.

Plastics industry groups issued their own five-point plan for a treaty last year calling for flexibility in national action plans, along with promoting chemical recycling and having governments commit to eliminating plastics leakage into the environment.

"We see the opportunity for a global agreement to really accelerate progress toward a circular economy," said ACC's Harris, who will also be at the talks in Kenya.

Consumer product makers also issued their own call for a plastics treaty in January, going further than the plastics industry and urging nations to adopt a treaty that would "reduce virgin plastic production and use."

Azoulay said one of the challenges for advocates of a stricter plastics treaty is fixing mistakes from the Paris Climate Agreement, where all the national plans put together have not added up to what is required globally.

"One of the challenges we're trying to avoid is what happened in the Paris Agreement," he said. "You have a general target and then every country is going to decide on its own national targets, and we see that the addition of the national targets doesn't amount to the global target."

Tangri said national plastics plans would likely get stronger over time, as has happened with country commitments at conference of the parties, or COPs, after the Paris Agreement.

"NAPs would still need to align with overall treaty goals — like improving circularity and reducing overall production — and subsequent [plans] and COPs would nudge laggard countries into improving their policies," he said.

While it may take a few years to see specific actions from the upcoming UNEA negotiations, both Azoulay and Tangri argued things could move quickly.

They said public consensus around plastics issues happens quickly compared with global environmental agreements on other topics.

The U.N Basel Convention's 2019 agreement to limit trade in plastic scrap, for example, was adopted after only about seven months of formal dialogue between countries, compared with several years that would normally be needed, Azoulay said.

"Plastics discussions have a life and nature of their own," he said. "It captures the public attention. It captures the attention of policymakers in a way that is unparalleled in any other environmental issue of our time."

"Everything that we've seen leading up to UNEA is faster, deeper and more ambitious than anything we've seen before," Azoulay said.