To tackle what’s been the plastic “epidemic,” the UN spun up a committee in 2022 tasked with brokering a legally binding global agreement. This ambitious treaty between UN member states was to address the full life cycle of plastics, from production to disposal: In short, define what counts as plastic pollution and curb the sorts of unchecked production that inevitably leads to it. But across five sessions since, countries have failed to reach a consensus on the text.
What was meant to be the final session ended last year in Busan, South Korea without agreement, and representatives from 175 countries are now set to meet again for part two, this time in Geneva, Switzerland. INC-5.2 will take place from August 5 to 14, during which negotiators will attempt to see eye-to-eye on the points of the draft treaty that have thus far proven most contentious. According to the (CIEL), there are over 370 such points.
Scope
Production, the use of chemicals of concern (those considered to be a risk due to toxicity and/or other qualities), product design and the financing of treaty implementation are some of the main points of disagreement. These issues have left countries in a deadlock, according to Cate Bonacini, Communications Manager for CIEL. There are countries that argue health should be excluded from the treaty’s scope. These topics will be front-and-center going back into the talks, and UN member states have spent the last eight months “working hard in closed-door meetings to find points of agreement,” Bonacini said in an email. “We’ll see the fruits of that labor soon.”
“At the heart of the issue,” Bonacini said, “there is a large disagreement about what plastic pollution is, and what measures are needed to end plastic pollution.” While the commitment focuses on the full life cycle of plastics, there’s been much dispute over where that cycle really begins.
“As scientists, we interpret the full life cycle as starting with extraction and production,” said Bethanie Carney Almroth, a professor of ecotoxicology at the University of Gothenburg and a member of the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty. “That would be fossil fuels and raw plastic production all the way through to product, to use, to trade, to transportation, to waste management, mismanagement and environmental pollution, including remediation of existing legacy plastics. All of it.”
While over 100 countries last December were in favor of a treaty that would impose production limits,…