Resin production limits hang over plastics treaty talks

Ottawa, Ontario — The debate over resin production caps is again surfacing in the plastics treaty talks as environmental groups and allied countries renew a push for them while plastics companies and other nations point to social and economic risks from blunt limits.

Ahead of talks formally restarting April 23 in Ottawa, groups have been releasing reports and holding public events to argue for or against caps.

The International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA), for example, released a study arguing that production caps would disrupt supply chains and force a switch to higher-cost alternatives.

As well, the head of another plastics group at the talks in Ottawa said the weeklong gathering of 4,000 diplomats and observers — twice the size of any of the three previous negotiating rounds — would be a missed opportunity if it focused on production caps.

"This meeting has the opportunity to be make or break for these negotiations," said Matt Seaholm, president and CEO of the Plastics Industry Association. "It will be a missed opportunity if we spend the week talking about how to stop the production of plastic."

Still, some environmental groups and some countries are renewing their push for the treaty to include some production cuts.

They argue that the world needs more sustainable levels of plastic manufacturing to curb the climate impacts of increasing production of fossil-based plastics. They also say some countries can't manage the current flows of plastic environmental pollution, making higher levels of plastics manufacturing dangerous.

A treaty negotiator from Rwanda, which co-chairs a group of 60-plus nations called the High Ambition Coalition with Norway, said that group wants to reduce plastics consumption.

"We cannot solve the plastic pollution crisis without reducing plastic production," said Juliet Kabera, head of the Rwanda Environment Management Authority, on a recent webinar from the Geneva Environment Network. "Despite this, we are still some ways from a shared understanding of how to beat plastic pollution.

"That is why Rwanda and other members of the High Ambition Coalition (HAC) are calling for binding provisions to restrain and reduce the consumption of primary plastic polymers to sustainable levels," she said, arguing that the group wants to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions within plastics and align the plastics treaty with other global accords on climate, biodiversity and chemicals management.

"While some may see this proposal as a risk, I wish to stress that reimagining plastic production systems and innovating in plastics carries with it a huge potential and economic opportunities," Kabera said.

Still, it's not clear how production caps will ultimately play out in upcoming treaty debates. Diplomats from France and Uruguay, on the webinar with Kabera, noted support within HAC countries.

A diplomat from Uruguay, for example, said an ambitious treaty "must include obligations for reducing the production of primary plastic polymers."

But countries like China and India have voiced concerns over caps, and plastics industry officials have pointed to some skepticism over hard caps coming from countries within the HAC.

A senior official with the Canadian government, in a background briefing with reporters April 18, said a production cap could be "out of step" with a circular economy. Canada is a member of the HAC.

"Only looking at a cap of production is a bit out of step with a circular economy," the official said. "That's kind of where our perspective is, and it's shared by many other countries as well. The cap on production is one perspective in the text but there are many other perspectives out there."

A smaller group of major petrochemical-producing nations that object to caps, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, have raised procedural objections in previous rounds that made it tough for talks to make progress.

The release of the detailed production cap study from ICCA suggests that industry officials still see it as a major point of debate. They hope the report, from Oxford Economics, helps carry their message to diplomats.

"This economic study fills in critical data gaps to help inform negotiators of the wide-reaching consequences a cap on plastic production would have on society," said Chris Jahn, president and CEO of the American Chemistry Council and secretary of ICCA.

The analysis notes that one option in the draft treaty includes a global production cap on primary plastics.

But the Oxford report said such a cap would shift consumer demand to alternative products with potentially higher greenhouse gas footprints and push up prices of plastic and consumer goods.

"The extent of the price increase is likely to vary significantly for different polymers and seeking to exempt specific end uses from the cost increase would be practically infeasible," the study said.

The report also questioned capping production at a time when the growth rate of recycled resin manufacturing is outpacing virgin resin. It said that between 2018 and 2022, recycled resin production rose 19 percent and virgin production rose 8 percent globally.

Industry groups at the talks prefer the treaty focus on demand-side measures like recycled content and extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs to increase the supply of recycled materials, rather than supply-side limits.

In an April 20 interview in Ottawa, Seaholm said advocating for EPR and the extra costs that can put on products to help fund recycling shows how industry's approach is changing.

"If you look at that from not even a decade ago, where the industry would have been hesitant to accept any type of fee on its products, and now it has gone so far as to not just say we'll accept it; we actually see the value of doing it," Seaholm said. "Recycled-content requirements is another important part of establishing that value on plastic waste that I think any international agreement should recognize."

In an April 17 statement, the group PlasticsEurope said it favored recycled content and EPR in the treaty as a mechanism to bring more value to plastic waste.

"We urge negotiators to focus on policy measures that will increase the value of plastic waste as a circular feedstock by increasing demand for circular plastic raw materials, including the introduction of mandatory recycled-content targets for sectors that use plastics at the national level," said Virginia Janssens, managing director of PlasticsEurope.

While industry groups point to those as areas of emerging consensus, many points remain open for negotiation, even within those topics.

Diplomats, for example, will be trying to bridge differences between how much target-setting the treaty should do vs. leaving decisions more up to national action plans.

Substantive differences remain in other areas such as whether the treaty should create lists of plastics applications that are problematic for recycling, or lists of potentially toxic chemicals of concern within plastics, and then ban or phase out those products and substances.

While plastics industry groups oppose those ideas, others support them. The Canadian diplomat, for example, said such lists are "grounded into science" and said the government hoped the treaty could take ambitious steps in those areas.

As well, the European Union put out a statement April 19 backing such action. It said the treaty should require "elimination and restrictions on plastic products that are avoidable or problematic as they are particularly prone to be littered or pose a significant risk to human health and the environment."

Seaholm said he thinks plastics industry groups have shown a willingness to compromise in the talks, which have been going on for 18 months.

"I think that what you've seen from industry, really over the last few years but certainly through this [treaty] process, is that we're coming with solutions. We're saying we're willing to accept compromise," Seaholm said. "If we spend the week [in Canada] saying let's just stop producing plastic, that's not the right thing to do economically; it's not the right thing to do environmentally."

For the first time in the treaty process, a delegation of lawmakers from Washington — four Senators and one other member of Congress — are coming to plastics treaty talks.

An April 20 statement from the delegation leader, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said they were there to push for an ambitious agreement.

One of the lawmakers, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said after an April 20 briefing in Ottawa that he was worried about slow progress in previous rounds and said negotiators should look for ways to overcome objections of "laggard states" in the talks.

"I think we need to really start rethinking the extent to which, what you might call the 'laggard states,' try to have a veto over what everybody else does," Whitehouse said. "I think we need to be thinking about what a coalition of the willing could accomplish within the larger consensus structure [of the treaty]."

In a short interview after his remarks, Whitehouse said he believed that if the U.S. took a stronger position, then the negotiations could move faster.

"We saw reporting after the fact that one of the reasons that more didn't get accomplished was because the United States wasn't willing to do more," Whitehouse said.

The delegation also includes Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Peter Welch, D-Vt., along with Rep. Jared Huffmann, D-Calif. A top aide to Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, was also on the trip.

The event Whitehouse spoke at was conducted under "Chatham House" rules prohibiting quoting speakers by name, but the senator agreed later that his remarks were public.

Diplomats expect to spend the week narrowing down what is now a 70-page draft agreement, which doubled in size after the last round in Kenya in November 2023, as talks there sputtered and countries sought to put more options and more language in the text.

The Canadian diplomat on the background call said countries need to streamline that text ahead of the fifth and final meeting of the intergovernmental negotiating committee, or INC, in South Korea in November.

"Now it's time to sit down [and] really negotiate hard," the diplomat said. "Second, I think we really need agreement from all countries that we are going to embark on intersessional work between INC-4 and INC-5."

Seaholm, too, said he thought agreeing on intersessional, technical work would be key to making the Ottawa meeting successful.

At the last round of talks, disputes kept countries from agreeing to a technical but important step of having formal intersessional work before this round in Canada.

"If we don't move the needle here, in Ottawa, and certainly if we don't set it up for intersessional work, the likelihood that something robust gets done in South Korea later this year just diminishes greatly," Seaholm said.

One industry executive at the talks, Doreen Becker from additive maker Ampacet Corp., said she worried the treaty was not giving enough attention to chemical recycling — also called advanced recycling by some advocates — which is another key priority for industry groups.

"The treaty is very overfocused on mechanical recycling, and I'm really worried about that because I think advanced recycling has a bigger part to play in the future of what we're doing around plastic waste," said Becker, sustainability director for the company.

In an interview at the Ampacet booth at a small exhibition plastics companies set up in a hotel ballroom adjacent to where diplomats were meeting, Becker said putting caps on production or limiting new recycling technologies could stifle innovation.

"The idea of putting caps on production and the whole idea that there might be issues letting companies expand really concerns me, especially when it comes to advanced recycling," Becker said. "You are going to limit innovation. That's a big deal."