Headed Toward the Finish Line, Plastics Treaty Delegates ‘Work is Far From Over’

The United States and other leading oil and gas producing countries that resist caps on future plastic production had a powerful effect on the latest round of United Nations talks aimed at achieving a global agreement to end plastic waste, observers said Tuesday.

Language that could result in plastic production caps remains in the text of a draft agreement but also continues to be a major point of contention.

As the treaty negotiations that began two years ago head toward a year-end deadline, environmental advocates raised a warning flag about “low-ambition efforts,” while a plastics industry group praised “the progress governments have made towards a legally binding agreement to end plastic pollution.”

Coming into the negotiations in Ottawa, Canada, which wrapped up Monday night, a Biden administration official said in a written statement that production caps would likely scare away oil and gas producing countries from joining the global plastics treaty and could threaten the prospect of an effective global effort to reduce plastic pollution.

For their part, United Nations Environment Program officials found reason for optimism as delegates from 170 nations went home from a meeting dubbed “INC-4” saying delegates had advanced the draft text of an agreement, which was one of goals for the seven days of treaty talks. They also said that delegates agreed to let the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on Plastic Pollution continue working before its fifth and planned final meeting later this year in Busan, South Korea—another goal coming into the talks. 

Between the previous three rounds of negotiations that began in late 2022, there was no such “intersessional” work, and as a result, little progress was made between the meetings.

“We came to Ottawa to advance the text and with the hope that members would agree on the intersessional work required to make even greater progress ahead of INC-5,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program. “We leave Ottawa having achieved both goals and a clear path to landing an ambitious deal in Busan ahead of us.”  

“The work, however, is far from over,” Anderson said. “The plastic pollution crisis continues to engulf the world and we have just a few months left before the end of year deadline agreed upon in 2022. I urge members to show continued commitment and flexibility to achieve maximum ambition.”

Despite her optimism, environmental advocates railed on Tuesday against the fossil fuel industry’s continued presence at the negotiations and its influence on many delegates, including those from the Biden administration.

“The United States needs to stop pretending to be a leader and own the failure it has created here,” said Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit environmental organization. “When the world’s biggest exporter of oil and gas, and one of the biggest architects of the plastic expansion, says that it will ignore plastic production at the expense of the health, rights, and lives of its own people, the world listens.”

Environmental advocates have pressed the Biden Administration to fight for a treaty that robustly addresses plastic pollution across its lifecycle from oil and gas extraction to production, use and disposal.

“Rather than showing leadership, the United States has remained disappointedly in the middle,” said Julie Teel Simmonds, a spokesperson for the Center for Biological Diversity, based in Tucson, Arizona. “The U.S. proposals lack binding targets and focus on cutting demand for plastic rather than production itself. And they don’t go beyond existing U.S. policy, which has failed to curb plastic production or protect frontline communities and the environment from harm.”

In a written statement issued Tuesday, the State Department said its delegation “worked collaboratively with more than 170 countries, as well as observers, to further develop an agreement that will offer a path to end plastic pollution.” 

The United States favors an approach in which each country has an obligation “to take measures to identify and control chemicals, including polymers, that present a risk of concern to human health or the environment,” the department said. “As part of these obligations, the U.S. approach also focuses on driving down the demand for new plastic.”

Prior to the meeting, a State Department spokesperson explained in an email to Inside Climate News why the United States looks skeptically upon capping plastic production: 

“We are concerned that an agreement that includes universal plastic production caps, product bans, and other prescriptive approaches might result in countries—especially major producers and consumers of plastics—not joining the agreement, thereby risking progress toward our common goal of addressing plastic pollution.” 

Instead, the spokesperson said, “we need to fundamentally change our relationship with plastics. That means (taking) action to make every step of the plastics lifecycle more sustainable.”

The goal remains to have a final text of the agreement finished by the end of this year, the State Department stated after the talks concluded. “We want that final text to be both ambitious—something that will make a meaningful impact on the problem—and inclusive—something that all countries will join, including the United States.

“We envision an agreement that is ambitious, flexible, and inclusive that takes a comprehensive approach to tackling plastic pollution throughout the plastic lifecycle, from how it’s made to waste management.”

U.N. officials have declared plastics to be a big part of what it calls “a triple planetary crisis” of climate change, nature loss and pollution.

The challenges include environmental and health effects of fossil fuel extraction and the health effects on people exposed to toxic emissions near plastics manufacturing plants. They also relate to a growing body of knowledge about the toxic nature of plastic materials, their potential impacts on consumers and the emissions of heat-trapping gases during plastic production and plastic waste incineration. Other concerns include the effects of plastic waste on the health of the oceans and ocean life, and the presence of micro and nano plastic particles and the toxic chemicals they carry on their backs now found inside human bodies.

In April, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory published a report that called growing plastic production a significant threat. “The industry’s current growth trajectory is exponential and plastic production is expected to double or triple by 2050,” the report said. “The rapidly increasing production of plastics and the continued reliance on fossil fuels for production, have contributed to numerous environmental problems and health harms,” including the climate. Heat-trapping emissions from plastic production by 2050 could use 20 to 30 percent of the remaining carbon budget required to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a target established by the Paris climate agreement that the world is close to exceeding. 

Nearly all plastics are made from fossil fuels, and for the second negotiation session in a row, the fossil fuel industry attended in force, according to an analysis of registration data by CIEL and other environmental groups.

They counted 196 registered lobbyists for the fossil fuel and chemical industry, an increase from the 143 lobbyists registered at the previous negotiating session. The industry lobbyists outnumbered the delegates from the European Union by 16 people, CIEL said.

Industry representatives expressed support for the outcome of the Ottawa talks and the continuing work on a global plastics agreement.

“Our industry is fully committed to a legally binding agreement all countries can join that ends plastic pollution without eliminating the massive societal benefits plastics provide for a healthier and more sustainable world,” said Chris Jahn, council secretary of the International Council of Chemical Associations, in a statement on behalf of Global Partners for Plastics Circularity. 

The global partners group is a multinational collaboration of associations and companies that make, use and recycle plastics.

“We will continue to support governments’ efforts by bringing forth science-based and constructive solutions that leverage the innovations and technical expertise of our industry,” Jahn said.

A lot of issues remain to be resolved, including how much of the plastics lifecycle from resource extraction to production, use and waste management, will be covered in the treaty. 

Delegates still must also agree on how the treaty would be financed, how it might control or limit toxic chemicals in plastics and the role of national plastics waste reduction plans.

The World Wildlife Fund, an international environmental group, said the treaty will need to match the scale of the plastics crisis, but lamented that “the latest talks still yielded no clarity on the treaty’s biggest fault line—whether the treaty will have common global rules or voluntary ones based on national plans.”

Some environmental advocates who closely followed the negotiations over the last week expressed concerns Tuesday that major oil and gas producing countries were effectively blocking future plastic production caps they believe are needed to blunt a further explosion of plastic production in the coming decades. 

“With fossil fuel producing countries and the industry planning huge increases in plastics production, it’s worrying that the negotiations are stalled on this vital issue,” said Yuyun Ismawati, an Indonesian environmentalist and member of the steering committee of the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), a global network of more than 600 nongovernmental organizations in 128 countries working to eliminate toxic pollutants.

“Every ton of plastics produced creates a ton of plastic pollution—and with it, releases of toxic chemicals that poison our food, water, bodies and our future,” said Ismawati, a 2009 Goldman Prize winner. “We will continue to call on delegates to take up the critical need to address production limits in the agreement.”