While many details remain unknown, plastics treaty talks will reshape industry

As the first round of negotiations toward a global plastics treaty wrapped up Dec. 2 at a United Nations conference in Uruguay, it's clear that any agreement will likely substantially reshape the plastics industry.

The weeklong negotiations are only the first of five sessions planned over the next two years, and the thousand-plus delegates from countries, industry and civil society heard many ideas. Those included calls from several dozen countries and about 80 businesses to limit virgin resin production, as well as demands for much more public information about chemicals and additives in plastics.

One plastics delegate to the Uruguay meeting said at a Nov. 29 public forum at the talks that the industry is changing and a treaty can be a map for rethinking plastics production as well as use.

"Most plastics come from fossil fuels; we're looking to diversify that," said Stewart Harris, senior director of global plastics policy at the American Chemistry Council in Washington. "The one thing that we all lack now is a North Star. We each have our own. But the global agreement provides the opportunity for governments to set that target, that North Star, toward which we can all focus our efforts."

The specifics of any such North Star are yet to be decided, with many differences emerging.

Some countries and groups favored allowing more flexibility in national action plans that the countries would develop, akin to the approach in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, while others favored stronger mandates and said the climate treaty approach hasn't worked because nations have too much flexibility.

As well, there were flashpoints around whether the treaty should focus on limiting plastics in the environment after it has been used, or take stronger steps upstream toward limiting plastics production.

Governments from several dozen countries, including those home to large plastics sectors like Germany and South Korea, said the treaty had to include caps on virgin plastics production. Some large consumer product brands that are big buyers of plastic packaging also publicly endorsed that.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in a Dec. 2 tweet, urged treaty delegates to limit plastic production.

"Plastics are fossil fuels in another form & pose a serious threat to human rights, the climate and biodiversity," Guterres wrote. "As negotiations towards an agreement to beat plastic pollution continue, I call on countries to look beyond waste and turn off the tap on plastic."

ACC, however, in a Dec. 2 statement, "strongly cautioned" that limiting plastics production would hurt efforts to reduce climate change and sustain a growing global population.

"Sustainable development relies on plastics for wind turbines, solar panels, lightweight electric vehicles, building insulation, clean water and preventing food waste," ACC said. "Additionally, production caps wouldn't address plastics leakage for the 3 billion people that lack access to adequate waste management."

Plastics groups said the treaty talks could accelerate investments in the industry toward circularity and recognized the push for more transparency in additives that came from participants at the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, as the weeklong negotiations are called.

"At INC-1, nations and stakeholders raised concerns about chemical additives in plastics," the International Council of Chemical Associations said in a Dec. 2 statement. "Although many governments already rigorously test and regulate chemical additives for safety, the plastics and chemical industry is embarking on potential pathways to improve transparency of additives used in plastics."

ICCA, which includes ACC and other major global chemical groups, said additives are crucial to making plastics perform, like designing them to absorb more impact in vehicle collisions so people absorb less.

But some countries and civil society groups said if the treaty calls for more recycling of plastics, they want more information about the chemicals within plastics.

A Nov. 24 letter in Science magazine noted that of 10,000 known chemicals in plastics, about 2,400 are classified as toxic. It urged the treaty to include chemicals policy to address that.

ICCA said the industry would keep working with governments around additives and chemicals included within plastics.

"Plastic and chemical manufacturers will continue working with national governments and international negotiators throughout the INC process so additives can be used with confidence and deliver the benefits essential to so many critical products," ICCA said.

Other plastics associations also weighed in. The Expanded Polystyrene Industry Alliance, for example, in a tweet criticized a United Nations Environment Programme proposal in the talks that the EPS makers said "ignores existing EPS recycling processes that have proven to produce a favorable environmental footprint."

ACC's Harris told the delegates that plastics groups hope the treaty could speed up investment around making plastics more circular, particularly in emerging economies.

"We're seeing a tremendous amount of investment in the developed world and not as much investment in the developing world," he said. "So how can the global agreement help us to unlock private sector investment, private sector innovation, especially in the developing world, to accelerate this transformation that the industry is undertaking to become more circular."

Both ACC and ICCA said in their statements that they supported a legally binding global agreement and said the weeklong talks were productive, with ACC noting it saw a "resounding desire" among governments for an agreement with country-specific action plans, an approach it supports.

ACC said those action plans could include specific amounts of recycled plastic in packaging, using technology to scale-up circularity, creating national standards, implementing extended producer responsibility to help pay for more environmental measures and using life cycle assessments to drive policy.

Some environmental groups, including the Break Free From Plastic organization, were pushing to have the industry excluded from negotiations, citing a precedent of excluding the tobacco industry from the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.