Efforts are getting underway in Geneva to finalize a global agreement to tackle the staggering and growing amount of plastic waste and its impact on human health, marine life and the economy.
Unless an international accord is inked, plastic waste is projected to triple by 2060, causing significant damage - including to our health - according to the UN Environment Programme ( UNEP ).
The UNEP-led talks follow a decision in 2022 by Member States to meet and develop an international legally binding instrument to end the plastic pollution crisis, including in the marine environment, within two years.
The scale of the problem is massive, with straws, cups and stirrers, carrier bags and cosmetics containing microbeads just a few of the single-use products ending up in our oceans and landfill sites.
Supporters of a deal have compared it to the Paris Climate Accord in terms of its significance. They have also pointed to the pressure allegedly being brought to bear against a deal by petrostates, whose crude oil and natural gas provide the building blocks of plastics.
"We will not recycle our way out of the plastic pollution crisis: we need a systemic transformation to achieve the transition to a circular economy," UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen has insisted.
Circular argument
The aim of the deal is for it to encompass the full life cycle of plastics, from design to production and disposal "to promote plastic circularity and prevent leakage of plastics in the environment", according to the text being used to guide the talks of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) gathering in the Swiss city.
At 22 pages, the INC document contains 32 draft articles which will be discussed line by line. The text is designed to shape the future instrument and will serve as a starting point for negotiations.
10-day stint
For 10 days from 5-14 August, delegations from 179 countries are due to pore over the INC text as they meet at UN Geneva, alongside more than 1,900 other participants from 618 observer organizations including scientists, environmentalists and industry representatives.
A key aim of the meeting is to share tried and tested ways of reducing plastic use such as non-plastic substitutes and other safer alternatives.
Ahead of the talks in Geneva, the respected medical journal The Lancet published a warning that the materials used in plastics cause extensive disease "at every stage of the plastics life cycle and at every stage of human life".
According to more than two dozen health experts cited in the journal, infants and young children are particularly vulnerable. "Plastics are a grave, growing, and under-recognized danger to human and planetary health" and are responsible for health-related economic losses exceeding $1·5 trillion annually", it noted.
