Following six major Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) meetings spanning nearly three years, the Committee was unable to reach an agreement on the creation of a binding international treaty to reduce plastic pollution. At INC5.2, which was attended by over 3,700 participants representing 184 United Nations member countries and more than 619 observer organisations1, attendees realised they couldn’t come to a consensus on solving the global plastic waste crisis.
Break Free From Plastic
Civil society health, environmental, and human rights organisations hold last-minute press conference.
“Almost all plastic comes from oil and fracking gases -- fossil fuels which are then combined with over 16,000 chemicals, many being toxic, to make the plastics we are faced with,” said Jim Puckett, Founder and Chief of Strategic Direction of the Basel Action Network (BAN). “But fossil-minded countries such as the US, China, India, Russia and the oil-rich Gulf States, were adamant that they would never agree to reduce plastic production – the climate, our environment and our health be damned.”
The oil and gas industry aims to triple the amount of plastic produced over the next three decades, primarily through the increased use of single-use plastic packaging, particularly in developing countries2.
With the one-country, one-vote nature of the United Nations, creating new international laws proceeds by consensus and not majority rule. As a result, a minority of wealthy countries acting on behalf of their oil, chemical, and related industries can hold back a majority of countries and block solutions. The countries in question wanted to focus on downstream solutions, directing the blame on consumers and developing countries for perceived lifestyle choices and their management methods of collecting waste for recycling. Whereas most experts are now realising that plastic recycling is a marginal and often a harmful enterprise.
BAN and other civil society organisations called the lack of consensus “a process failure of global governance.” However, they believe the global movement towards reducing harmful plastics is “unstoppable and inevitable” with the INC process contributing a wealth of new data on the impacts of plastics demonstrating that all phases of the plastics lifecycle, including recycling, create persistent, toxic waste and products, as well as dangerous micro-plastics. NGOs like BAN continue to call on policymakers, industry, and consumers to avoid plastic and seek out alternatives.
Puckett concluded, “Despite this particular effort falling short, the greater campaign to educate the public about plastic and its increasingly evident harms has just begun. Following this initial treaty effort, we now have all of the data and science we need to make the vision of a more plastic-free world - a reality.”