Can countries agree to “end the world’s plastic pollution crisis”?

Delegates from 175 countries have been meeting this week in Busan, South Korea, in an attempt to negotiate a legally binding treaty to address global plastic pollution. The gathering marks the fifth and final phase of multiyear talks of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC-5), with a decision expected on a treaty when the summit ends on Sunday.

“We have a historic moment to end the world’s plastic pollution crisis and protect our environment, our health, and our future,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, told attendees at the start of the week’s negotiations, calling it a “moment of truth” for the delegations, and the planet.

The talks have been marred by a wide gap in opinions between delegations from small, often developing nations, and more advanced economies — and some major global corporations whose presence is, in itself, controversial.

The nonprofit Center for International Environmental Law said Wednesday that fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists at INC-5 collectively formed the single largest delegation. The 220 registered corporate lobbyists at the summit outnumber all the delegates representing European Union nations combined.

“Their strategy is designed to preserve the financial interests of countries and companies who are putting their fossil-fueled profits above human health, human rights and the future of the planet,” said Delphine Levi Alvares, CIEL’s global petrochemicals campaign manager.

What’s the goal of INC-5?

The goal of the summit is to finalize a legally binding treaty to reduce the amount of plastic pollution that enters the environment and address the scourge of waste already clogging the world’s waterways and landfills and contaminating everything from the food and water we consume to our arteries.

The INC-5 delegations were tasked with defining reduction targets, determining how to regulate hazardous waste and chemicals and outlining criteria to manage the entire life cycle of plastics, from production to disposal. 

If they do come to an agreement and ratify a new treaty, then it will be adopted Sunday and future meetings of the group will be held to ensure signatory countries are complying.

What’s at stake?

There’s little dispute that something must be done to tackle plastic pollution, but how to do it remains contentious.

One of the solutions discussed this week has been a potential cap on plastic production, but the idea has proven deeply unpopular among nations whose economies still lean heavily on the production of plastics and fossil fuels, which are essential to making plastic, including China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Another topic under negotiation is whether to impose an outright ban on certain chemicals used in some plastics that are known to be toxic to the environment and dangerous to human health. There is historical precedent for such focused bans, including the decades-old Montreal Protocol, which saw the production of ozone-depleting chemicals including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) barred universally.

Island nations and developing countries are — just as with climate change — among those most directly impacted by plastic pollution, but least responsible for producing the waste.

Some of these countries say a plastic pollution treaty is vital to preserve their fragile ecosystems and public health.

Speaking on behalf of the Small Islands Developing States group at the talks, Penivao Moealofa, of the small Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, said it was “already a challenge to manage our own plastic waste, and it is an injustice to us to continue to manage others’ plastic waste, especially when we contribute to less than 1.3% of the total global plastic waste.”

If policies are not implemented to change things, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says “annual plastics production, use and waste generation are projected to increase by 70% in 2040 compared to 2020,” when the world churned out roughly 480 million tons of new plastic products.

Where do different countries stand on plastic pollution?

A group of 68 countries or blocs, including Canada, the EU, Mexico and Australia, have come to be known as the High Ambition Coalition (HAC). Their leaders have backed the goal of stopping all new plastic pollution from entering the environment by 2040, and they believe countries that create the most plastic, including the U.S., should pay to transition the global economy away from the reliance on new plastics.

In a joint statement for INC-5, the HAC highlighted the importance of creating global rules to ensure products are designed with circularity in mind. Circularity is the concept in sustainability of reusing and repurposing products, rather than using and then discarding them, to reduce the amount of waste.

The petrochemical industry has been broadly supportive of a treaty, but it firmly opposes production caps and would prefer to rely on other solutions, such as recycling. But as CBS News has previously reported, recycling many plastics is incredibly challenging, expensive, and has not been scaled up to anywhere near the level that would make it a viable solution to the problem.

Scientists have suggested that, given the pace at which new plastic products are being manufactured, recycling won’t be sufficient to combat its impact, and reduced production should be the first priority. 

In August, Reuters reported a shift in U.S. government policy to support a global treaty calling for a reduction in plastic production, but three months later, nonprofit news website Grist reported the Biden administration was backtracking on that support ahead of INC-5.

The U.S. State Department has called for an agreement that works “towards ending plastic pollution entering the environment by 2040,” but the American policy leans largely on recycling and circularity as primary mechanisms to achieve the goal — solutions supported by the petroleum and chemical industries.

Another factor weighing on the minds of many delegates in Busan this week is the fact that the U.S. delegation was sent by the soon-to-depart Biden administration. There’s concern that any commitments Washington does make could be abandoned by the incoming Trump team.