Forging a global agreement

While some representatives from organizations engaged in negotiations feel that reaching a robust and legally binding Global Plastics Treaty through the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) will be achievable by the year-end goal set by the U.N., others believe more time will be needed, citing little substantive progress and a lack of intersessional work.

What everyone can agree on, however, is the significance of and need for global plastics negotiations at the U.N. level.

A problem that needs addressing

Kate Bailey, chief policy officer at the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR), Washington, describes the U.N. discussion as “monumental.”

“The world has been grappling with plastic pollution and plastic waste for a number of years, but the fact that the U.N. has decided to take this on, and 170 countries are engaged, really solidifies that this is a turning point,” she says.

“I think the Global Plastics Treaty is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create the global rules to end plastic pollution,” says Eirik Lindebjerg, the Oslo, Norway-based Global Plastics Policy Lead for WWF International. “And those global rules that are the most urgent to get in place in the treaty would be global bans and phaseouts of the most problematic, high-risk plastic products; it would be product design standards and requirements to make sure that the plastics that we will still use will be reusable or recyclable and that we’ll get away from the single-use economy that we are in right now.”

The treaty also must provide sufficient financial support to developing countries to implement those obligations, he adds.

Adam Shaffer, assistant vice president of international trade and global affairs at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), Washington, says it’s “crucial” policymakers take on the issue and take the right approach.

“We’re urging the governments, the U.S. government in particular, but also the U.N. and all of the member states, to take a deliberate but cautious approach to finding a solution to address plastic pollution,” he says, adding that recycling needs to be part of the solution.

While it does address recycling, what has developed to date is broader in its scope. “This is a treaty that many people thought would just focus on packaging or just focus on plastic in the environment, and what is eminently clear from the comments from the EU and others is that they are thinking so broadly and they have such an expansive view of what this treaty should cover that this treaty will affect every company in the plastics industry, regardless of what they do,” says Patrick Krieger, vice president of sustainability at the Plastics Industry Association (Plastics), also based in Washington.

Given that initial expected focus, many packaging firms were engaged early in the discussions as part of the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty, which includes companies such as Emerald Packaging, Amcor PLC, Nestle, Unilever and The Coca-Cola Co. The group calls for action across the entire plastics value chain, with upstream solutions that include the elimination of problematic plastics and chemicals of concern, better product design and scaling of reuse and refill systems. “These measures are essential, as we know that recycling and waste management alone are not a viable approach to stop plastic pollution,” the coalition says.

Rather than focus on packaging, Krieger says the treaty is “going to land on every industry—automotive, aeronautics, medical [and] textiles.”

INC-ing a deal

The process to create a Global Plastics Treaty began in March 2022 when the U.N. Environment Assembly passed a resolution to develop an international, legally binding instrument to address plastic pollution. The executive director of the UNEP was told to convene an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) to develop “the instrument,” which is to be based on a comprehensive approach that addresses the full life cycle of plastic, including production, design and disposal. The INC began working in the second half of 2022, with the goal to complete negotiations by the end of this year.

The first session (INC-1) was Nov. 28-Dec. 2, 2022, in Punta del Este, Uruguay, with 2,245 participants: more than 950 attendees from 147 member states, 1,080 stakeholders, 57 intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and 148 U.N. system organizations.

According to the UNEP, the meeting set the foundation to shape the global instrument to end plastic pollution, with many governments confirming their desire to have an instrument that addresses the full life cycle of plastics, protecting human health and the environment, with special attention given to countries most in need and their unique circumstances.

“We must eliminate and substitute problematic and unnecessary plastic items and ensure that plastic products are designed to be reusable or recyclable,” UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said. “[It’s] important we find our way towards an ambitious multilateral instrument that ensures plastic products are circulated in practice, not just in theory.”

Summarizing the discussions, then-INC Chair Gustavo Meza-Cuadra Velásquez of Peru said, “It is clear that we have started to see areas of convergence in the development of the future instrument.”

INC-2 was May 29-June 2, 2023, in Paris, with more than 1,700 participants—more than 700 delegates from 169 member states and more than 900 observers from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It resulted in a mandate for the INC chair, with the support of the secretariat, to prepare a zero draft, or rough draft, of the agreement ahead of INC-3.

INC-3 was Nov. 13-19, 2023, in Nairobi, Kenya, with more than 1,900 delegates representing 161 member states, and more than 318 observer organizations that included U.N. entities, IGOs and NGOs.

Members discussed the chair’s 31-page zero draft, went through a compilation of text to include all members’ views, prepared a validated, co-facilitator merged text and agreed on a way to approach topics in the future, according to UNEP.

The INC also elected a new committee chair, Luis Valdivieso of Ecuador, as Meza-Cuadra stepped down from the position at the end of INC-3.

INC-4 is set for April 23-29 in Ottawa, while INC-5 will be Nov. 25-Dec. 1 in South Korea.

Recycling’s role

As the discussions progress, Bailey is encouraged by the acknowledgement of the role recycling will play in addressing the issue of global plastic pollution. “Especially in the U.S., there has been a lot of pushback from NGOs around the role of recycling, and the U.N. treaty has been very clear that recycling is a pivotal solution to solving the plastic pollution problem,” she says. “Recycling alone will not solve the problem—we’ve heard that a lot as well, which is absolutely true—but it is a fundamental part of how we move forward.”

Shaffer adds, “Plastic pollution is a really serious worldwide crisis that needs to be addressed.”

It’s crucial that policymakers take “the right approach, but we can’t just recycle our way out of the crisis,” he says, citing the lack of infrastructure in countries hardest-hit by plastic pollution.

Shaffer says ISRI wants to see a solution that addresses plastic pollution without creating adverse effects for its member companies.

“One of the potential options that was laid out in the zero draft relates to transboundary movement of plastic waste [and] recycled plastic,” he says, adding that most member states seemed opposed to provisions that would contradict the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal or go beyond it.

ISRI would not support a provision that would inhibit free and fair trade of plastic products, Shaffer says. “Our goal is to make sure that what ultimately comes out of this plastic treaty negotiation is not significantly burdensome on recyclers in terms of trading,” he adds. “There’s already significant restrictions as it relates to Basel, so anything even further would be very problematic for members.”

APR’s engagement around the treaty has been focused on what needs to be done to increase recycling. “How do we really transition to that fully circular economy where recycled plastics are the new supply chain and this is what we’re using every day?” Bailey says.

Some of that work has been reflected in the zero draft, she adds, including designing for recyclability.

“You’ve got what will be fairly broad treaty language around the need for design standards, but then you will have technical annexes that will evolve over time,” she continues. “And that’s really where the rubber hits the road. What do we mean by design standards? How do we harmonize them across the world? So, we are bringing the APR Design Guide forward as a global model.”

APR also was happy to see the zero draft mention the need for extended producer responsibility (EPR) policy. “We are very active working with U.S. states on trying to implement those policies,” Bailey says. “We are very encouraged by the Business Coalition for the Global Plastics Treaty and their support for robust EPR programs. And, really getting to the heart of the issue of how we collect more recyclables, we need to fund the system, we need to fund the system adequately and sustainably long term, both building out access to recycling and also education and engagement, and EPR for packaging and paper has been widely proven to do that.”

ISRI wants to ensure EPR provisions in the treaty do not disrupt existing efficient markets for certain recycled plastics, Shaffer says, citing the plastics produced in automobile shredding as one example. “Lumping all types of plastics into an EPR scheme could be very problematic for us, so we have to make sure that how these programs are written doesn’t disrupt any of the existing infrastructure and existing markets.”

The APR also is looking for the treaty to address market demand and the economics of using recycled plastics. “We know that markets continue to be volatile for recycled content and virgin plastic is cheap, and we’re looking to strengthen that part of the zero draft and strengthen those commitments to use more recycled content,” Bailey says. “Requirements, mandates like we’re seeing in some U.S. states, could be other economic levers. We basically need to level the playing field between recycled plastic and virgin plastic.”

Little progress reported

Following INC-3, many NGOs said “low-ambition” countries derailed progress at the talks.

Graham Forbes, Greenpeace USA head of delegation to the Global Plastics Treaty and Global Plastics Campaign lead, says in a written statement: “Plastic directly harms each of the 8.1 billion people on this fragile planet, but our leaders have effectively chosen to treat petrochemical companies as the only stakeholders worth listening to.

“The Global Plastics Treaty must reduce plastic production by at least 75 percent by 2040. We cannot protect our climate, our biodiversity or our health unless we reduce plastic production. This is inarguable, but more than halfway through the treaty negotiations, we are charging towards catastrophe. Governments are allowing fossil fuel interests to drive the negotiations towards a treaty that will absolutely, without question, make the plastic problem worse and accelerate runaway climate change.”

Lindebjerg of WWF, with U.S. headquarters in Washington and international headquarters in Switzerland, describes the discussions as intense, adding that what sticks out the most is that a large group of countries is willing to adopt a treaty that creates these regulations, with more than 100 nations in support of global bans and phaseouts of harmful plastics, while 140 countries advocate for establishing binding global rules rather than relying solely on voluntary actions.

“I think it’s also quite interesting that that kind of ambition comes from all parts of the world: Specific countries in the African group have been very clear, in most Latin American countries, countries in Asia, most of Europe and also North America—Canada and Mexico—have been really vocal,” he adds. “I think that is what sticks out and makes me encouraged that we can actually achieve this.”

However, he notes that at INC-3, groups of countries with petrochemical interests were stalling the negotiations related to how far upstream into plastics production the regulations should go, which resulted in fewer decisions coming out of the Nairobi meeting than WWF had hoped for. “There wasn’t that decision on intersessional work, for example,” he says.

Instead, the talks were more focused on downstream waste management, which WWF finds problematic, Lindebjerg says, “because you can’t solve that issue if you’re not making sure that the products that you’re supposed to manage actually can be recycled and don’t create any problems as they do today in the waste stream.”

Following INC-3, the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty issued a news release that reads in part, “We were disappointed to see a proliferation of alternative text proposals during this round of negotiations, including calls for the deletion of key provisions related to primary plastic polymers, identification of chemicals and polymers of concern, as well as problematic and avoidable plastic products.”

Krieger says little progress was made at INC-3 in Nairobi because many countries were trying to expand the scope of the possible treaty “in a way that is outside the comfort zone of all of the other countries.”

“This is a treaty that should be addressing plastic waste, particularly in the environment. And they talked about chemicals management as if there aren’t other treaties that exist out there—U.N. treaties—that address chemicals management. It’s entirely duplicative. And I think that that’s why you’re seeing a lot of resistance.”

The zero draft released following INC-2 deprioritized issues such as plastic waste in the environment, infrastructure and collection so much so that Krieger says participants joined INC-3 wondering what the goal of the treaty is.

In the revised draft issued following discussions in Nairobi, he says, “They are finally listening to everybody. Is it messy? Yes. But it has to get messy before it can get cleaned up. It has to get big; we have to put everything on the table before we can start negotiating.”

Lindebjerg adds, “The challenge now is that there’s a lot on the table. … Now we hope that governments are able to unite together around certain permissions and use this time between the negotiation meetings to talk to each other and propose a common language.”

Lindebjerg is optimistic the year-end target will be reached. “If we don’t get a strong treaty, plastic pollution is expected to triple by 2040,” he says. “So, on the one hand, we have to. On the other hand, if all those countries who have expressed a willingness to establish a strong legally binding plastics treaty are willing to push through—and that is the encouraging part that there is such a strong majority that is pushing for this—and if they don’t let a few countries block them on the way, I think this will definitely be possible.”

“I am optimistic that we will get something done and that it will be a good road map,” Bailey says of the year-end deadline for the negotiations. “I am thinking about the agreement not as the endpoint but as the beginning. This is the beginning of the next stage when the real work begins.”

Shaffer echoes that sentiment. “I think we are still in the very early stages of this entire process. Reaching an agreement is just the beginning of the process,” he says, noting that a conference of parties will follow, annexes will need to be written and a governing body will need to be established.

“We want to see something that the U.S. can sign,” Krieger says of the Plastic’s goal for the treaty. “It does us no good to have another international treaty out there that we are not a party of.

“Also, the issue of plastic waste in the environment is one that crosses all borders, and so all countries need to be engaged in addressing this challenge.”

The author is editorial director of the Recycling Today Media Group and can be reached at dtoto@gie.net.