Ambitious plan to end plastic pollution set out in draft global treaty

Adam Vaughan is a writer.

Nearly 200 governments have agreed to a legally binding global treaty to end the plastic pollution crisis by tackling the material's entire supply chain.

At a meeting of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA), countries thrashed out a draft deal of the first treaty to tackle the 9 billion tonnes of plastic produced since the plastic age. The starting gun is expected to be fired tomorrow when the final agreement is finalized.

The draft appears to show that the advocates of a more ambitious treaty have won. There were two competing ideas. All stages of plastic's life cycle, from production to consumption and disposal, were encompassed in one of the groups. The second deal was focused on plastic in the ocean.

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The draft deal supports the approach of the two countries. The treaty will be legally binding. There is a need for some sort of financing model to help curb plastic use and waste because it is harder for lower-income countries to deal with it than high-income ones.

Anderson says that we now have one text, it speaks to full life cycle, it speaks to legally binding, and it speaks to understanding that some countries can do it more easily than others.

Anderson compared the accord to past environmental treaties such as the Montreal protocol on ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons and the Minamata convention on mercury pollution, both of which led to massive reductions in emissions of these harmful chemicals. She says these are proof that global deals can make governments and industry work differently.

The world produced 381 million tonnes of plastic in 2015, and hundreds of thousands of tonnes end up in the oceans every year, most of it from lower and middle-income countries with less capacity to burn or recycle it. There are fears that plastic pollution may affect our health, although more work is needed to establish that.

Anderson says failure to tackle the problem isn't an option.

The best way to tackle plastic pollution is to prevent it in the first place, according to Steve Fletcher. By covering the whole supply chain, a global agreement to tackle plastic pollution can support upstream solutions such as reducing or replacing plastic in products.

Before the global plastic treaty takes effect, it will need to be worked out what measures should be enacted. Anderson wants to achieve that within three years. The draft calls for legally binding elements. She says limiting how much virgin polymer is put into economies is one example of how that might be implemented. Technical assistance is one of the elements of the treaty that won't be legally binding.

Anderson will feel like the world has accomplished something if the draft stays the same tomorrow.

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