Global Treaty to Tackle Plastic Waste
Support is building internationally for a new global treaty to tackle the plastic waste pollution crisis. Plastic bags now symbolise the world’s growing plastic waste problem but globally there are seven definitions on what a plastic bag actually is – complicating and confusing efforts to reduce their usage worldwide.
So far 115 nations have banned plastic bags, along with other plastic packaging. But countries have different definitions on what ‘illegal’ plastic actually is, which has created loopholes, enabling illegal plastic bags to be used in markets and by street vendors.
Tunisia banned bags that are less than 40 microns thick, whilst France banned bags less than 50 microns thick. Although Kenya had passed a complete plastic bag ban in 2017, it now struggles with illegal bags being smuggled in from Uganda and Somalia. Rwanda had also banned the use of these bags, but when it imported millions of mosquito nets from the United States, they arrived in plastic packaging whose chemical content was unknown, rendering them unrecyclable.
These examples, from a recent article in National Geographic, highlights the many different contradictory policies, inconsistencies, and lack of transparency that are found in the global plastics trade, making it even harder for countries to control their every growing accumulation of plastic waste.
“Not only do definitions differ from country to country, there also are no global rules for such practices as determining which plastic materials can be mixed together in one product; that creates a potential nightmare for recycling. Internationally accepted methods for how to measure plastic waste spilling into the environment don’t exist. Without uniform standards or specific data, the job of fixing it all becomes essentially impossible.”
Although the plastic pollution debate has been on the United Nations agenda since 2012, little has happened. But along with strong public pressure, there is now growing support for a new global treaty to address these inconsistencies and to find a way to tackle the growing issue of plastic waste. Over 100 nations have already expressed their support for a plastic treaty. Preliminary talks are underway and are optimistic that a policy could be approved within a timeframe that will make a difference. They hope that an agreement can be reached at the next meeting of the UN Environmental Assembly in Nairobi.
The problem of non-recyclable plastic
Currently every year, new plastic waste is created at a rate of 303 million tons (275 million metric tons). So far, 75% of all plastic that has ever been produced has been thrown away, becoming waste. This accumulation in our environment has led to a massive plastic pollution problems which is has a hazardous effect on our wildlife, the health of our oceans, and our human food chain.
Production of non-recyclable plastics are expected to triple by 2050. New research, highlighted by National Geographic, suggests that “the accumulation of plastic waste in the oceans is also expected to triple by 2040 to an average of 32 million tons (29 million metric tons) a year”.