UN Global Plastic Treaty Draft: Industry experts offer mixed reactions

07 Sep 2023 --- The UN’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) has published a zero draft text of the international legally binding treaty on plastic pollution ahead of the third negotiation session, which will take place from November 13-19 at UN Environment Programme (UNEP) headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. 

The zero draft enlists placeholders for subject matters that are yet to be discussed in detail by governments. According to preliminary analysis from Break Free From Plastic (BFFP), “the most promising” areas presented in the draft include options for progressive reduction of plastic production, elimination of polymers and chemicals of concern, elimination of problematic short-lived and avoidable plastics.

Furthermore, the recognition of the need for transparency, just transition for workers involved in current waste operations that will change and the setting up of systems and targets for reduction and reuse, are also identified as key areas for incorporation into a national plan. 

Analyzing the draft, professor Edward Kosior, founder of Nextek and Nextloop tells Packaging Insights that “one thing that is missing from the UN policy document is the scientific modeling of the impact of adopting the various options to demonstrate why it is crucial to accelerate all efforts to address the problem of plastic waste.” 

“A clear understanding of how various steps will change the current direction of the impacts of plastic waste is needed so that all countries are encouraged to take the fastest pathway to net zero.”

The zero draft of legally binding treaty on plastic pollution includes a comprehensive list of target areas, but the industry expects governments to be a catalyst of change. The other missing element in the policy document, Kosior says, is the consideration of keeping carbon emissions low to avoid producing an unintended consequence on the fast-growing CO2 emissions. According to him, global options that reduce plastic waste and carbon emissions must be coupled together.

“This advance policy document does not have any details that will come in the appendices about the specific issues that will be regulated or targeted. These details will be of great interest and concern to many companies once defined in the UN protocol and will certainly be the focus for much discussion and negotiation, which needs to be done with one thing in mind – the immediate health of the planet and its vast array of life forms on this singular goldilocks planet. There is no Planet B.” 

Devil in the details 
Von Hernandez, BFFP global coordinator (Philippines), asserts that the zero draft provides a good basis for upcoming negotiations at INC-3, but “the devil will be in the details.”

“The work of the negotiating parties is cut out for them. The choices that member states make and the operative verbiage they select will be the mirror that gets held up to their ambitions. These decisions will determine if we will be getting a strong, effective treaty,” says Hernandez.

Meanwhile, Kosior highlights that the zero draft offers each country three options involving degrees of enforcement and engagement from defined targets and limits to less stringent policies that allow governments and the business world to change more slowly.

“The points of focus are quite comprehensive for the national plans, however, the range of options offered to countries ranging from strict to sympathetic, could result in low impacts if many nations select the less regulated options,” stresses Kosior.

“Ideally, each nation should be able to demonstrate how their national plans can reach net zero by 2040 or hopefully earlier. This is important since 60% of the world’s plastics are made and consumed or used away from Europe and the US in the Far East, implying that for the policy to be effective in these regions, these countries should be especially encouraged and supported to reach net zero before 2040.”

“This is a global problem that involves all countries and the resolution and actions to address the problem effectively needs to be uniform like that seen with the Montreal Protocol and the ozone layer protection.”BFFP members at INC-2, in June.

Turning off the plastics tap
INC-2 meetings in June had ended in frustration after half of the five-day event was spent re-debating procedural rules, such as the treaty’s voting procedure. While the deadlock was eventually broken, environmentalists accused some industry-backed governments of conspiring to delay the treaty and diminish its powers.

Sian Sutherland, co-founder of A Plastic Planet and Plastic Health Council, says that governments “must be the catalyst for businesses to embrace reuse at scale and innovate plastic out of our lives. Introducing the Global Plastics Treaty would be the first step on the road to change and protect both the health of humans and the planet.”

“Plastic broke our system of reuse, refill, repair and share to use it once and bin it. This single-use culture that has been so rapidly normalized has to be stopped – reusable packaging and natural alternatives are the future. One day, we will question why it was ever acceptable to use the material and energy to make packaging we trash after just one use,” she tells Packaging Insights.

“I am heartened to see that the UN has recognized that to embrace a new age of reuse is to cut the head off the toxic single-use snake.”

Misses in the draft
BFFP says that potentially problematic and ambiguous provisions in the zero draft include text on recycled plastic content, EPR and waste management. According to the organization, without ambitious standards, these areas could misplace the emphasis on recycling and waste management measures, undermining the treaty’s effectiveness. 

“A key element that needs to be strengthened is the recognition of indigenous people’s leadership throughout the different elements, which is currently only mentioned in the context of knowledge sharing and capacity building,” urges BFFP.

Lena Estrada Añokazi, global indigenous people’s representative of UNEP (Uitoto Indigenous of the Amazon), says: “Indigenous people bear a disproportionate burden of the impacts of plastic pollution, with their rights undermined at every stage of the plastic life cycle. The draft zero document must contemplate the framework of rights, sovereignty and the principle of free self-determination of Indigenous Peoples as one of the principles of the plastics treaty.”

“For there to be effective participation of Indigenous Peoples in the plastics treaty, indigenous knowledge systems that are pre-existing scientific knowledge must be considered at the same level, not only as an exchange of information but in the recognition that these indigenous knowledge systems have to contribute to the mitigation and prevention of pollution of the entire plastic cycle.”

By Radhika Sikaria