INSIGHT: Working towards a global, legally binding agreement to eliminate plastic waste

Nigel Davis

07-Dec-2022

LONDON (ICIS)–“A lot more collaboration and action is needed from businesses to achieve the level of change required, and keep climate goals within reach,” the UK-based climate action NGO Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) said earlier in December.

The organisation was publishing its report on annual progress measuring the voluntary agreements it has launched since 2005 on food and drink, plastics pollution, and fashion and textiles.

The initiative has had some success. In the past three years, the UK Plastics Pact has doubled the recycled component in packaging, WRAP said.

The pact has also driven a significant elimination of unnecessary and hard-to-recycle components of packaging. But much more needs to be done to tackle the plastics waste crisis.

WRAP’s other initiatives are targeted at reducing food waste and waste in the fashion and textiles business.

VOLUNTARILY
Voluntary agreements do work. They bring together governments, businesses local authorities, academics, NGOs, industry groups, and citizens to clearly  address climate-related problems.

“The voluntary model operates in tandem with policy development, but can deliver impact faster, and with more flexibility, than regulation alone,” WRAP said.

“Using a systemic approach, businesses address these issues through innovation and collaboration, while generating opportunities for responsible growth and demonstrating to their customers and shareholders commitment to sustainable change.”

WRAP has developed a ‘target-measure-act’ approach to help evaluate and give updates against specific targets and to help avoid greenwashing.

Recycling must be a core purpose for today’s producers of primary polymers who are still finding their way along a path towards increased rates of recycling – by almost any means possible it seems – and through much closer collaboration with customers and what will become the circular supply chain.

That circular supply chain – if it can be called that – must be made to work much more effectively, however, and in all parts of the world.

Producing companies can do so much, their customers, as brand owners and converters, possibly more, to help recycling processes deliver what is expected of them.

Clearly, widespread, effective waste collection is a major challenge as is the ongoing education or, rather, persuasion of consumers to consume differently, recycle more, and to understand that they are key players in the circularisation of the plastics waste problem.

Industry tends to opt for the technical fix but needs to help develop the organisational matrix that will enable more widespread and more effective rates of recycling.

In coming years, producing companies will require the recycled or non-fossil fuel-based feedstocks if they are to survive in a circular and lower carbon economy.

UN TREATY ON PLASTIC POLLUTION
The first UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-1) meeting on eliminating plastic waste in the environment in Punta del Este, Uruguay, which ended on 2 December, has been considered a success.

It is highlighting global thinking on plastic waste and how the plastic waste problem can be tackled in an internationally balanced way.

“The meeting set the foundation to shape the global instrument to end plastic pollution, with many governments confirming their desire to have an instrument that addresses the full life cycle of plastics, protecting human health and the environment, with special attention paid to the unique circumstances of those countries most in need,” the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said.

The INC-1 is looking towards a multilateral agreement which ensures that plastic products are circulated in practice and not just in theory.

It will meet next in Paris in May, when countries are expected to begin negotiating towards a legally binding agreement to end plastics pollution as outlined by a UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) resolution adopted in March.

The International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA) has said that it supports a legally binding agreement to eliminate plastic waste in the environment and is supportive of the direction of INC negotiations.

It has highlighted common themes emerging from the negotiations:

  • Scaling up a circular economy for plastics, where used plastics are captured and remade into new plastics
  • Designing products for circularity
  • Enabling partnerships between the private sector and governments to unlock financing to improve waste management, which serves as the foundation of a circular economy
  • Enhancing transparency on chemical additives

“This global agreement presents a significant opportunity to accelerate those efforts by fostering public private partnerships, aligning private investment with country goals and actions, and reducing barriers to technology and expertise necessary for an equitable transition to circularity,” it said.

Insight by Nigel Davis

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