Has the UN helped put the world on track for a plastic-free future? 

A new agree­ment to work towards a glob­al treaty on end­ing plas­tic pol­lu­tion has been hailed as a major break­through by cam­paign­ers. How­ev­er, there’s still a long road ahead.  

At a meet­ing in Nairo­bi in ear­ly March, the UN Envi­ron­ment Assem­bly adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion on plas­tic pol­lu­tion. Del­e­gates from 175 coun­tries, includ­ing the UK, endorsed an agree­ment that address­es plas­tic waste and calls for two years of nego­ti­a­tions toward a com­pre­hen­sive, inter­na­tion­al treaty on the full life cycle of plas­tics. 

Inger Ander­sen, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Unit­ed Nations Envi­ron­ment Pro­gramme (UNEP), called the agree­ment “the most sig­nif­i­cant envi­ron­men­tal mul­ti­lat­er­al deal since the Paris accord” on glob­al warm­ing in 2015. 

We have lots of work ahead of us, but it is the begin­ning of the end of the scourge of plas­tic

Over the next two years, a nego­ti­at­ing com­mit­tee will out­line the con­tents of a legal­ly bind­ing treaty that will look at how plas­tic is pro­duced, designed and dis­posed of. The com­mit­tee will con­sid­er ways to reduce plas­tic pol­lu­tion across the plan­et. It will also dis­cuss the cre­ation of a finance facil­i­ty to sup­port the goals of the treaty and ways to mon­i­tor progress toward achiev­ing them, includ­ing through nation­al action plans.

“I think some of the thornier issues will be around what kind of goals will we be set­ting, how will we be mea­sur­ing this and what speed of imple­men­ta­tion is it that we would wish to see,” said Ander­sen. “But we have been here before.”

Public pressure

Pub­lic dis­qui­et and impa­tience over the grow­ing moun­tain of plas­tic waste weighed heav­i­ly on del­e­gates as they laid the ground­work for a legal­ly bind­ing agree­ment to con­trol plas­tics. More than 90 CEOs signed up to a joint call for a legal­ly bind­ing agree­ment. 

This includ­ed the heads of Pep­si­Co, Coca-Cola, Proc­ter & Gam­ble and Unilever, respond­ing to pres­sure from share­hold­ers and con­sumers. 

“We are at a crit­i­cal point in time to estab­lish an ambi­tious UN treaty on plas­tics,” said Alan Jupe, the CEO of Unilever, “one that cuts down vir­gin plas­tic pro­duc­tion, fos­ters col­lab­o­ra­tion for sys­temic solu­tions and speeds up the tran­si­tion to a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my glob­al­ly.”

US sup­port was anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment, in a pol­i­cy shift from the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion. “This is only the end of the begin­ning,” said Mon­i­ca Med­i­na, the US assis­tant sec­re­tary of state for oceans and inter­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal affairs. “We have lots of work ahead of us, but it is the begin­ning of the end of the scourge of plas­tic on this plan­et.” 

Igna­cio Gav­i­lan is sus­tain­abil­i­ty direc­tor at the Con­sumer Goods Forum, which rep­re­sents more than 400 retail­ers and man­u­fac­tures across 70 coun­tries. 

“The plas­tic treaty agree­ment is a land­mark moment in chang­ing our rela­tion­ship with plas­tic. Col­lab­o­ra­tion and shared com­mit­ments are essen­tial to tack­ling the plas­tics prob­lem. Pol­i­cy­mak­ers, busi­ness­es and con­sumers around the world must now cap­i­talise on the momen­tum, work­ing togeth­er to ensure no plas­tic ends up in nature,” he says.

“There are many com­po­nents need­ed to achieve a more pos­i­tive future for plas­tic. We need con­tin­ued research and devel­op­ment to find sus­tain­able alter­na­tive raw mate­ri­als to reduce our depen­den­cy on plas­tics. Busi­ness­es must invest in inno­va­tion to improve pack­ag­ing design and elim­i­nate the use of prob­lem­at­ic mate­ri­als and excess pack­ag­ing.”

Greenhouse gas pollution

Going into the sum­mit, the main stick­ing points were whether any agree­ment would be legal­ly bind­ing or vol­un­tary, and if it would address plas­tic pro­duc­tion and sin­gle-use pack­ag­ing design or be con­fined to improv­ing waste man­age­ment and recy­cling.

A draft res­o­lu­tion, enti­tled End plas­tic pol­lu­tion: Towards an inter­na­tion­al­ly legal­ly bind­ing instru­ment, said the treaty should address “the full life­cy­cle of plas­tic”, mean­ing pro­duc­tion and design, as well as waste.

“This agree­ment by gov­ern­ments at UNEA is tru­ly his­toric and I’m so proud that the UK co-spon­sored the pro­pos­als and helped them get over the line,” said Lord Zac Gold­smith, a UK envi­ron­ment min­is­ter, who attend­ed the Nairo­bi con­fer­ence.

The UN says 400 mil­lion tons of plas­tic is pro­duced every year, with that fig­ure set to dou­ble by 2040. At present, only 9% is recy­cled. It is dif­fi­cult to recy­cle, slow to decay, expen­sive and pol­lut­ing to burn, and breaks down into tiny par­ti­cles that enter the food chain and cause harm to ani­mals. 

Plas­tic also accounts for a sig­nif­i­cant and ris­ing share of green­house gas pol­lu­tion. By 2050, plas­tic pro­duc­tion, use and waste could account for 15% of emis­sions, accord­ing to UNEP.

Vir­ginia Janssens is man­ag­ing direc­tor of Plas­tics Europe, a trade body. “The res­o­lu­tion pro­motes the impor­tance of cre­at­ing a sup­port­ive pol­i­cy envi­ron­ment that is tai­lored to the spe­cif­ic needs of our indus­try and val­ue chain to facil­i­tate our tran­si­tion,” she said. “It high­lights the ben­e­fits and neces­si­ty of active col­lab­o­ra­tion and dia­logue between our indus­try and all rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers.”

Business faces new tax on plastic packaging

Despite its low tax, pro-busi­ness cre­den­tials, the UK gov­ern­ment hasn’t been afraid to use tax­es to encour­age com­pa­nies to go green. The lat­est exam­ple is the plas­tic pack­ag­ing tax. 

From 1 April busi­ness­es will have to pay tax on plas­tic pack­ag­ing that doesn’t con­tain at least 30% recy­cled plas­tic; this will be set at a rate of £200 per met­ric tonne. 

Gen­er­al­ly, busi­ness­es agree with the aim of the tax, which aims to reduce the use of vir­gin plas­tic in pack­ag­ing, even if they are against the levy of yet anoth­er expense. 

How­ev­er, this lat­est green tax is going live in the mid­dle of a cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis, with ener­gy and labour costs hav­ing a sig­nif­i­cant impact on busi­ness and con­sumers. 

Call for delay

Jayne Almond, direc­tor of pol­i­cy and cor­po­rate affairs at the Food and Drink Fed­er­a­tion, has called for a mora­to­ri­um on all new leg­is­la­tion, includ­ing the plas­tic pack­ag­ing tax. 

“Let’s pause every­thing that’s not absolute­ly crit­i­cal,” she told MPs. “There are some things under dis­cus­sion we could pause. Con­sul­ta­tions that are impor­tant but are not time sen­si­tive could be paused, such as the plas­tics tax.”

How­ev­er, the gov­ern­ment is in no mood to change course at this late stage, so the tax seems set to go ahead. Min­is­ters hope they’ll be able to point to a mea­sur­able fall in the use of vir­gin plas­tic to jus­ti­fy any addi­tion­al cost. The government’s envi­ron­men­tal impact assess­ment sug­gests that use of recy­cled plas­tic in pack­ag­ing could increase by around 40% because of the tax. 

Envi­ron­men­tal groups includ­ing Green­peace have wel­comed the tax but say that more needs to be done if the UK is to meet UN envi­ron­men­tal tar­gets. 

Helen Bird is strate­gic tech­ni­cal man­ag­er plas­tics at the Waste and Resources Action Pro­gramme (WRAP). “We are con­cerned that there will be pack­ag­ing which is unable to achieve this,” she says. “We need greater quan­ti­ties of high-qual­i­ty mate­r­i­al to be col­lect­ed and recy­cled so that there is enough mate­r­i­al avail­able. This requires improved pack­ag­ing design, con­sis­tent col­lec­tions and more peo­ple play­ing their part in recy­cling.” 

Recycling investment 

There needs to be sig­nif­i­cant fur­ther invest­ment in UK plas­tic recy­cling, Bird adds. 

“This includes roll-out of recy­cling tech­nolo­gies to enable recy­cled plas­tic to be used in more food pack­ag­ing, includ­ing enhanced sort­ing and non-mechan­i­cal (chem­i­cal) recy­cling, and for these tech­nolo­gies to be recog­nised by the reg­u­la­tors as a valid form of recy­cling.”

Anoth­er con­cern raised by envi­ron­ment groups is the high num­ber and com­plex­i­ty of exemp­tions. This includes thou­sands of com­pa­nies pro­duc­ing or import­ing less than 10 tonnes of plas­tic pack­ag­ing a year and prod­ucts that con­tain mul­ti­ple mate­ri­als if the plas­tic con­sti­tutes less than 50% of the fin­ished weight. 

Ill-prepared

Even at this late stage, many busi­ness­es seem ill-pre­pared for the intro­duc­tion of the tax on April 1. A recent sur­vey by the Food­ser­vice Pack­ag­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (FPA) showed that almost 80% of FPA mem­ber com­pa­nies that sell plas­tic pack­ag­ing and prod­ucts were not yet pre­pared to admin­is­ter the tax. Just over 50% were still unsure which of their packs and prod­ucts are sub­ject to the tax. 

To add anoth­er com­pli­ca­tion, busi­ness­es can’t reg­is­ter on the gov­ern­ment web­site until April 1, the same day the tax comes into effect. 

Mar­tin Kersh, FPA exec­u­tive direc­tor, said: “HMRC should be con­cerned that if an informed group of busi­ness­es is unpre­pared, where does that leave the many busi­ness­es who we sus­pect may not be aware of the tax or, if aware, have giv­en no thought to set­ting up pro­ce­dures to man­age the tax?”

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