We swim in it, walk on it, ingest it, and even suspect that we breathe it: plastic is suffocating the planet and living beings. Without an international agreement, plastic pollution will very quickly pose a major ecological and health risk.
On Tuesday, a new round of negotiations will begin in Geneva on a treaty that aims to regulate the entire life cycle of plastics, from production to consumption and waste disposal.
Exponential plastic production
Without urgent action, 37 million tons of plastic could be dumped into the ocean every year by 2040, according to UN estimates.
“We are suffocating under plastic,” warned Ms. Mathur-Filipp, Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on Plastic Pollution, in an interview with UN News on the sidelines of the Ocean Summit in Nice.
Plastic waste has penetrated almost every ecosystem on the planet—and, in the form of microplastics, is also accumulating in the human body. Microplastics have been found in human arteries, lungs, and brains, and even in breast milk.
It is estimated that 18 to 20% of global plastic waste (between 10 and 23 million tons) ends up in the ocean. Approximately 13 million tons of plastic accumulate in the soil each year.
By 2025, global plastic consumption is expected to reach 516 million tons.
“If we don’t act, there will be no intact ecosystems left, neither on land nor at sea,” warned Ms. Marthur-Filipp.
Plastic recycling is not a panacea
It is estimated that only 21% of plastics are currently economically recyclable, meaning that the value of the recycled materials is high enough to cover the costs of collection, sorting, and processing.
Only 9% of all plastics produced are actually recycled globally.
However, many lobbyists and oil-producing countries — the primary source of plastic — are pushing to limit the treaty’s focus to waste management, avoiding any regulation of plastic production’.
The negotiation process was launched in 2022 at the request of the United Nations Environment Assembly, the supreme decision-making body on global environmental policy.
Since then, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) has met five times in less than two years—an unusually fast pace by UN standards.
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Backgrounder on plastic pollution
