Leaders make final proposal for deal on plastic pollution at talks in S Korea | Weather News

Negotiators are meeting in Busan, South Korea, this week in a last-ditch effort to forge an agreement to tackle the global problem of plastic pollution.

“We must end plastic pollution before plastic pollution ends us,” said Kim Wan-sup, South Korea’s environment minister, during the opening session on Monday.

Led by Norway and Rwanda, 66 countries and the European Union say they want to deal with the amount of plastic in the world by controlling its composition, production, use and disposal.

Several countries, including island nations hit hard by plastic pollution, are calling for a strong deal to tackle the unstoppable growth in the production of plastics, most of which are made from fossil fuels.

But countries and companies that produce oil and plastic want the agreement to focus more on recycling methods, even though less than 10 percent of the 400 million tons of plastic produced annually are currently recycled, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.

That leaves hundreds of millions of tons of plastic that could end up in landfills or landfills, or in the natural environment anywhere from the depths of the ocean to the peaks of Mount Everest.

‘You can’t reform your way out of this problem’

The Pacific island nation of Micronesia is helping to lead the initiative, called Bridge to Busan, which recognizes that “the full life cycle of plastics includes the production of basic plastic polymers”.

Island countries, such as Micronesia, are dealing with large amounts of foreign plastic waste washing up on their shores and the effects of climate change, which the plastic industry is also contributing to. According to Carbon Brief’s analysis, plastics currently cause three times the greenhouse gas emissions of aviation.

“We think it’s the heart of the deal, to go upstream and get to the problem at its source,” said Dennis Clare, a legal adviser and plastic consultant from Micronesia.

“There’s a tag line: ‘You can’t talk your way out of this problem.’

On the other hand there are countries, especially oil producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia, who want to focus only on downstream.

“The truth is that many countries do not see themselves represented in this paper,” warned the head of the Saudi Arabian delegation, Eyad Aljubran, speaking for the Arab group.

The key to any deal will be China and the United States, neither of which has ever openly sided with either bloc.

Earlier this year, Washington raised hopes among environmentalists by showing support for some limits on production, a position it is now reportedly reversing.

Advocates of a strong deal are also concerned that plastic companies are influencing the negotiations.

A recent investigation by Greenpeace found that members of one industry-led initiative, known as the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, produced 1,000 times more plastic than the initiative cleaned, despite an investment of $1.5bn as of 2019.

Members of the program include major oil and chemical companies from across the plastics supply sector, including oil giants ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies, which produce chemicals used in plastics and other products, Greenpeace said.

The coalition was launched by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the largest plastics trade association, to “change the conversation – away from a simple plastic ban”. It holds a “significant presence” in the UN global plastics agreement negotiations, according to Greenpeace.

The fifth and final session of the UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution is expected to conclude on Saturday.

Opening the meeting on Monday, the Ecuadorian ambassador in charge of the negotiations warned countries that the conference is “more than writing an international agreement”.

“It’s about the rise of humanity to meet the challenge,” said Luis Vayas Valdivieso.