A Paris agreement on plastic

0
Plastic bottles – killing us all

Seal Beach, CA - December 13: Plastic bottles and other trash is piled up along the bank of the San Gabriel River just a few hundred yards from the Pacific Ocean in Seal Beach on Tuesday morning, December 13, 2022. Recent heavy rains have sent trash flowing down the river from many miles inland. (Photo by Mark Rightmire/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images)

0 0
Read Time:5 Minute, 6 Second

 

 

Today Leslie Kaufman explains a key tension point at a UN meeting on plastic pollution. You can read and share a free version of this story on Bloomberg.com. Subscribe to Bloomberg for unlimited access to climate and energy news, and to receive Bloomberg Green magazine.

World awaits the draft of a UN treaty on plastic 

By Leslie Kaufman

Tire dust versus discarded fishing nets. 

These two items are not normally paired together, much less seen as being in competition, but countries and activists are sparring over how or if they should be addressed in a UN global plastic treaty being negotiated in Paris this week. 

A key tension point is whether an agreement should focus on cleanup of the plastic waste already clogging the world’s oceans or move beyond that to limiting the manufacture of potentially harmful components in polymer products, or even enforcing plastic-use bans. The US, one of the largest producers and users of plastic, is so far pushing for the first option, say people following the negotiations. 

Negotiators expect to have a draft at the end of this round of talks after agreeing last December to develop a legally binding deal on plastic pollution by 2024.

 

Plastic bottles and other trash washed up on the shore of the San Gabriel River, near the Pacific Ocean, following heavy rains in Seal Beach, California, on Dec. 13, 2022. Photographer: Mark Rightmire/MediaNews Group RM

“This will be the first real draft text of the international legally binding agreement and getting things added after that becomes really, really difficult,” said Anja Brandon of the Ocean Conservancy, a Washington, DC-based environmental advocacy organization. “So this becomes the basis on which all other conversations and negotiations move forward.” 

The Ocean Conservancy is lobbying for the draft to include regulation of abandoned fishing equipment, sometimes known as “ghost gear,” which is mostly made of plastic and creates health risks for marine mammals. 

“Yes, there are other types of international agreements and forums that talked about ghost gear,” Brandon said. “But this is really an unparalleled opportunity to actually get everyone on the same page and setting standards and practices for reducing harms.”

 

On the latest episode of Zero, Akshat Rathi talks to Dipender Saluja of Capricorn Investment Group and an early investor in Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX about how Silicon Valley got into investing in climate technologies. Listen to Zero — and subscribe now on AppleSpotify, or Google to get new episodes every Thursday. 

 The UN hinted at what future standards and practices could look like in a report released on May 16. Extended Producer Responsibility laws, for example, would require manufacturers to be fiscally responsible for the end-of-life disposal costs of their plastic products and replacing plastic with organic materials wherever possible, like with cardboard takeout containers. 

It wouldn’t be cheap. The report estimates that to re-orient economies away from plastic and then build infrastructure to recycle the rest properly could cost $65 billion a year. 

Possibly more difficult will be to achieve an agreement to ban the manufacturing of certain chemicals. 

Winnie Lau, director of the Preventing Ocean Plastics project at the Pew Trust, another Washington-based advocacy group, wants issues like tire dust addressed in the draft. Studies have recently traced the dust from a chemical in tires to salmon mortality in the Pacific Northwest.

Lau would like to see some polymers banned now and also a mechanism set up for evaluating chemicals in the future. “That’s going to be really crucial,” she said, “because our understanding of plastics and the impacts they can have on us and the environment is continuing to evolve.”

 

Waste opportunity 

5%
This is how much packaging waste the European Union wants to reduce by 2030, compared with 2018 levels. In November, the European Commission proposed sweeping regulations to help accomplish this.

Trashing the ocean

“The system is being overwhelmed by all this pollution. We need preventative strategiesand not just to focus on cleanup and recycling. We need to find replacements for single use [plastic] because recycling just doesn’t work.”
Marcus Eriksen

 

Co-founder and scientist for the 5 Gyres Institute

More on Big Plastic

Follow this link to read Bloomberg Green’s investigations into the global recycling problem. As part of the Big Plastic series, you’ll find out why West Africa is drowning in discarded bottles; the complicated messinvolved in the business of recycling; and more about the petrochemical companies that have a stake in keeping the world hooked on plastic.

 

Accra’s drains are so chocked with trash, especially plastic bottles, that it floods every rainy season. Photographer: Nipah Dennis/Bloomberg

What can you do?

Recycling can be a confusing task for consumers. Are pizza boxes okay to recycle? What about broken glass? The do’s and don’ts vary but you can probably recycle more items than you thought. Bloomberg Greenexplains some general rules of thumb for what you can and can’t recycle across the US. You can also find a cheat sheet on what waste is compostable here.

 

Illustration: Joi Fulton for Bloomberg Green
Happy
Happy
0 %
Sad
Sad
0 %
Excited
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
Angry
0 %
Surprise
Surprise
0 %

Average Rating

5 Star
0%
4 Star
0%
3 Star
0%
2 Star
0%
1 Star
0%

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.