A U.N. committee met in Paris Monday to work on what is intended to be a landmark treaty to bring an end to global plastic pollution, but there is little agreement yet on what the outcome should be.
FILE - A man walks on a mountain of plastic bottles as he carries a sack of them to be sold for recycling after weighing them at the dump in the Dandora slum of Nairobi, Kenya on Dec. 5, 2018. Negotiators from around the world gather at UNESCO in Paris on Monday, May 29, 2023, for a second round of talks aiming toward a global treaty on fighting plastic pollution in 2024.
Because it's an extremely short timeline for treaty negotiations, experts say that in this second session it's critical that decisions are made about the objectives and scope of the text — such as what kind of plastics it will focus on. But that is easier said than done. Over 2,000 participants, including governments and observers, from nearly 200 countries have descended on the meeting hosted at the Paris-based U.N. cultural agency, UNESCO.
The treaty could focus on human health and the environment, as desired by the self-named “high ambition coalition” of countries, led by Norway and Rwanda, with limits on plastic production and restrictions on some of the chemicals used in plastics. The coalition is committed to an international, legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution by 2040. It says that this is necessary to protect human health and the environment while helping to restore biodiversity and curb climate change.
Joshua Baca, vice president of plastics at the American Chemistry Council, said countries are so different “a one-size fits all approach won’t be effective, equitable, or implementable. Instead, the agreement should require national action plans as that will most effectively eliminate plastic pollution specific to a country’s situation.”
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