Plastic production cap remains contentious as treaty talks open door for agreement

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Plastic treaty talks in Ottawa wrapped up with a moderately streamlined draft and an agreement for countries to keep negotiating before a final set of talks scheduled for November in South Korea.

Although that doesn’t answer the contentious question of whether there should be a cap on plastic production, it leaves the door open for an ambitious treaty to tackle what United Nations officials have called “a global scourge” of plastic pollution.

The fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution, or INC-4, ended early Tuesday, as negotiators talked past midnight to set the stage for the final round. The committee is tasked with coming up with an international, legally binding treaty on plastic pollution by the end of this year, spurred by a pollution crisis and health concerns resulting from the world’s growing plastic burden.

Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said “all of the options are still on the table” for the next round of negotiations.

“I believe there are lots of things that we can find common ground on as part of this treaty, such as the elimination of single-use plastics, better labelling regulations, increased use of recycled plastics,” Mr. Guilbeault said.

On the final day of plastics treaty talks down to the wire as countries enter critical phase, Rwanda and Peru asked countries to consider reducing new plastics production by 40 per cent by 2040, based on a 2025 benchmark.

Cap on plastic production may be too complicated for global treaty, Guilbeault says

Industry groups are opposed to production caps, saying they could result in higher prices for consumers and interfere with production of plastic needed in applications including waste management, health care and construction.

In a statement, World Plastics Council chairman Benny Mermans welcomed the agreement on intersessional negotiations but said production limits should be off the table.

“Arbitrary production caps, while superficially attractive, will decrease, rather than increase, the investment and innovation required to create a circulate plastics system and end plastic pollution,” Mr. Mermans said.

Global plastic production is estimated to amount to 400 million tonnes a year. Around the world, about one million plastic bottles are purchased every minute and up to five trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year, according to the United Nations Environment Program. Over all, half of all plastic produced is designed for single-use purposes – used once and then thrown away, the agency says.

Anja Brandon, associate director of U.S. Plastics Policy, in a statement said the treaty must include strong mandates to “reduce the amount of plastic we are making and using in the first place.”

Matthias Egger is head of Environmental and Social Affairs at the Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit founded in 2013 that focuses on collecting plastic from oceans and rivers. He attended the Ottawa talks as an observer.

“What fills me with hope is the fact that we now have intersessional work scheduled,” Mr. Egger said.

He hopes a potential treaty will address all aspects of the plastic life cycle, from chemicals used in production to recycling to waste disposal.

But even with a treaty in place, the need for plastic cleanup won’t go away, he said.

In an April 23 post, Greenpeace International criticized cleanup initiatives, including the Ocean Cleanup, saying such efforts were “akin to mopping the floor while the tap was still running.”

Mr. Egger disputed that characterization, saying there is no single solution to the plastics crisis and pointing to recent projects by the Ocean Cleanup, including collecting plastics from a river in Guatemala.

“It’s not a zero-sum game,” Mr. Egger said, speaking from Switzerland. “If you leave plastics in the environment, it will fragment into nano plastics and microplastics, which are the harmful parts. We need to mitigate the ecological and human health time bomb and remove it.”