Nations agree to negotiate a landmark treaty on plastic pollution
Countries launched talks on a legally binding global agreement to tackle plastic waste across its whole life cycle.
Nations agreed this March to begin negotiating a landmark global treaty to tackle plastic pollution, launching a process that campaigners hailed as potentially the most significant environmental agreement since the Paris climate accord.
Meeting under the auspices of the United Nations, countries endorsed a mandate to develop a legally binding treaty addressing plastic across its entire life cycle — from production and design to use, waste and recycling — rather than focusing narrowly on cleaning up waste after the fact.
The scale of the plastics crisis is staggering. Production has soared over recent decades, and vast quantities of plastic waste leak into the environment each year, choking oceans, littering landscapes and breaking down into microplastics now found virtually everywhere, from the deepest ocean trenches to human blood. Plastic is also a significant and growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, being made largely from fossil fuels.
The decision to pursue a comprehensive treaty covering the full life cycle was seen as a victory for those arguing that the crisis cannot be solved by recycling alone, and that curbing the production of plastic itself must be on the table.
Difficult negotiations lay ahead, with deep divisions expected between nations and industries over whether and how to limit production. But the launch of the process marked a recognition that plastic pollution had become a planetary crisis demanding a coordinated global response, and raised hopes for a binding agreement to stem the tide.