On March 2, 2022, countries from around the world agreed to establish a global treaty to end plastic pollution. After the first meetings in Senegal and Uruguay, the discussions around the treaty are in full swing. Next, the country’s representatives are heading to Paris, France, in May 2023. They’ll meet for the second session of the INC, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, which is the forum where the treaty is debated. After that, three more of these INC meetings are scheduled. If all goes well, the diplomats could agree on the plastics treaty at the final conference in the summer of 2025.
So that’s the rough timeline – pretty ambitious, compared to how slow politics often move. But speed isn’t everything. How will the delegates make sure to actually get a treaty that tackles plastic pollution effectively, and in a fair way? Who gets a seat at the negotiating table, and who doesn’t? And what does the treaty need to contain and cover? In the past months, Anja asked scientists and experts to send her their thoughts and demands. In this episode, you’ll get to hear messages from Richard Thompson, Bethany Carney Almroth, Sonia Dias, Tridibesh Dey, Martin Wagner, Trisia Farrelly, Rebecca Altman and Lesley Henderson.
Credits & Links
- Theme song: Dorian Roy
- Music: Blue Dot Sessions
- UNEP video from Nairobi
- UNEP video from Uruguay
- Thanks for kind permission, additional audio and images to Miranda Grant, Ahmed Yusuf and the UNEP press team.
- Cover art: Maren von Stockhausen
- Thanks for feedback to: Baldeep Kaur
Transcript
UNEA decision and UNEP video (YouTube)
Espen Barth Eide
May I take it that the assembly wishes to adopt this draft resolution?
I see no objections, it is so decided. (Clapping, music)
Inger Andersen
So, today was one for the history books. It was truly a big day for the environment. There were high emotions when that gavel came down. What there’s now clarity on is that we will have a strong, global, international and comprehensive framework on plastic pollution. We produce around 400 million tons of plastic every year, and 300 million tons of that goes right into the waste dump. And 11 million tons of that into our oceans. (water splashing)
Keriako Tobik
We need collective action to develop viable and sustainable substitutes for plastics.
Amina J. Mohammed
And it will make a difference. One that shows again the true value of multilateralism.
Inger Andersen
The fact that member-states put up their hands and said we will resolve this, is major. But now is the time to roll up our sleeves, because the world is watching. (Clapping, music fades)
Theme music – Plink by Dorian Roy
Anja Krieger
Welcome to Plastisphere, the podcast on plastics, people, and the planet. My name is Anja Krieger. What you just heard is from a United Nations video celebrating a decision that was made in Nairobi, Kenya, on March 2, 2022. That day, countries from around the world agreed to establish a global treaty to end plastic pollution. The discussions around the treaty are now in full swing, kick started with two initial meetings in Senegal and Uruguay last year. Next, countries’ representatives are heading to Paris, France. They’ll meet for the second session of the INC, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, which is the forum where the treaty is debated. After that, the plan is to hold three more of these INC meetings. If all goes well, the diplomats could agree on the plastics treaty at the final conference in the summer of 2025.
So that’s the rough timeline – pretty ambitious, compared to how slow politics often move. But speed isn’t everything. How will the delegates make sure to actually get a treaty that tackles plastic pollution effectively, and in a fair way? Who gets a seat at the negotiating table, and who doesn’t? And which issues does the treaty need to address? In the past months, I’ve asked scientists and experts to send me their demands. In this episode, you’ll get to hear some of their messages. And the first I’d like to share with you is from Richard Thompson, a marine biologist at the University of Plymouth in the UK.
Richard Thompson
I’m delighted to see the arrival of the plastics treaty. It gives a broad consensus that actually our current patterns of design, use and disposal of plastics is unsustainable, that we need to change our ways – and that’s really pleasing. But my main plea for the plastics treaty is that we adopt the same level of evidence and accuracy to guide us on solutions, the same level of evidence that we relied on when we’ve been trying to define the environmental problem itself. We need that evidence to make sure that the solutions we adopt actually work, and we need it to avoid unintended consequences.
Anja
Richard is widely known as one of the leading scientists of microplastic research. His team first reported tiny bits of plastics in beach sand around the world, and in decades-old plankton samples. In 2004, they published a paper titled “Lost at Sea”. It introduced microplastics as a topic of concern.
Richard Thompson
If we use properly supported, evidenced interventions, I absolutely believe this is a global environmental challenge that we can fix. But currently, I’m concerned that in many cases people are resorting to guess-work around the solutions, because we’re lacking some of the key evidence to guide us on what works and what doesn’t work.
Anja
Richards leads the International Marine Litter Research Unit. There, he and his colleagues are investigating the impacts of plastics and how to tackle them. Like the pollution caused by the fashion we wear.
Richard
To give just a couple of examples. In my lab at the University of Plymouth, we just tested devices that are intended to capture plastic microfibers from clothing when you wash it in a domestic washing machine. We tested six devices, but unfortunately only two of those achieved a significant reduction in the rate of microfiber release to wastewater.
Anja
As you probably know, microfibres from textiles are a substantial part of the plastic problem. Just one load of your washing machine can release hundreds of thousands of them into the water. So inventors came up with the idea of microfibre filters: devices that you can put into or attach to your washer, to stop the tiny plastic fibres from flowing out. France is the first country to make them mandatory in new washing machines. But there’s a lot of room for improvement. Because most of the current models don’t work efficiently yet. Richard’s colleague Imogen Napper tested some of them, and found that many models caught less than a third of all fibres. And even with the best filter, a substantial portion of microfibres escaped down the drain.
Richard
Now some would say that actually, it’s not about domestic washing machines, that the solution there is in sewage treatment plants – and they can be very effective at catching fibres and other microplastics. But let’s not forget that most of the world’s population don’t have the benefit of advanced wastewater treatment or a domestic washing machine. And actually, the research that we’ve done in parallel to this showed that over half of all the emissions occurred while you were wearing garments, not while you were washing them. And to wind back to some of the first studies we did, we demonstrated that there could be up to an 80 percent difference in the rate of fibre release, depending on the type of clothing. So some garments are shedding fibres 80% less than others – and what that points to is that the design stage is really, really critical in many of our interventions. It’s about designing better products rather than trying to catch things further down the pipe as it were.
Anja
That would mean changing the fast fashion system and the kinds of materials it uses. But where do we start?
Richard
The scale, the place where you adopt the intervention is also going to be critically important. Some interventions are appropriate to the local scale or a national scale – but to go back to that last example of the fibres, if we’re to try to harmonise and improve fibre, yarn, textile design to reduce microfiber shedding, that can’t be done at a national or a local scale, it’s going to require international action.
Music – Pelliu by Blue Dot Sessions
Anja
Production is global, consumption is global, and pollution is global. That’s why the United Nations decided to make plastics an issue for a global treaty. But to really be effective, it will be crucial that any action is based on sound information. Which solutions really work? Like in Richard’s example of the microfibres: Can you prevent them at the source, through different textile design –and if not, where do you try to catch them? We also need to consider unintended consequences, Richard says. Like what happens to the ecosystem if you try to capture plastics. For example, Richard and his team tested a device to catch plastics from shallow waters. Not the microfibres from clothing, but the bigger pieces of trash. It’s basically a bucket that you can lower down into a harbor, which sucks in stuff from the surface.
Richard
…and what we found was that it was catching a lot of seaweed, it was catching very, very small quantities of plastic. And unfortunately, when we came to empty the device, what we found was that it also captured fish and shellfish – and the majority of those were now dead.
Anja
Hundreds of these bins have been installed in ports, marinas and yacht clubs all around the world.
Richard
We need to be really clear that as we move towards solutions, that we’re not resulting in unintended consequences that are actually potentially harmful o the environment.
Anja
That’s why products first need to be tested and tried, Richard says, and we need to understand the context in which they might work.
Richard
So I think in summary, it’s really, really important that we make progress, that we harness the opportunity of the treaty. But we’re absolutely going to need to rely on independent robust scientific evidence to guide us as to which interventions work and which ones might have unintended consequences.
Music – Live performance of Tango at INC1
Jyoti Mathur-Filipp
Excellencies, ladies and gentleman, I declare the first session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an internationally legally binding instrument on plastic pollution. (clapping)
Bethanie Carney Almroth
A number of us were down in Uruguay at the first INC, the first negotiating meeting for the plastics treaty.
Anja
Bethany Carney Almroth is a professor of ecotoxicology and environmental sciences at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
Bethanie Carney Almroth
One of the things that became really apparent to me there is that it’s very, very important that we are in the room, that scientists are there to speak directly with negotiators, to help answer questions, to help deliver the best available knowledge, to address the questions that we need to answer in the treaty. We need to make sure that decisions being made in those rooms are made on the best available science.
Anja
Bethanie is an expert on the impacts of chemicals found in plastics products, which she has studied particularly in fish. She has also studied the usage and spread of plastics in society and the environment. Despite all of this expertise, attending the meeting in Uruguay was no easy challenge.
Bethanie Carney Almroth
It also became apparent that it’s difficult for scientists to get there. Academic institutions are not easily accredited through the UNEP organization, and this is a problem. We talk a lot about credibility and transparency. Who are you in the room? Who are you representing? Do you have any conflicts of interests?
Anja
Last winter in Uruguay, scientists like Bethanie had to come through a back door. To participate, they had to piggyback with an NGO or another accredited group. So they weren’t really visible. UNEP is the United Nations Environmental Programme, which hosts these meetings. Bethanie and other scientists contacted the organization to change the process. Their hope was to get all researchers accredited directly through their universities.
Bethanie Carney Almroth
There are actors in the room there who do have conflicts of interests. Here, I’m speaking about producers, for example, the oil industry were there. They have apparent, very apparent conflicts of interest in this decision making process. So if we want to have people in the room that are bringing knowledge and facts without these kinds of conflicts of interests, we need to get academic scientists in the room.
Anja
But changing the participation structure is impossible for UNEP, because decisions at this scale can only be made with approval of UN member states. Bethanie and other scientists are now trying to find other ways to help independent scholars to attend more easily.
Music – Hutter by Blue Dot Sessions
Sonia Dias
Hi Anja, here’s Sonia calling, Sonia Dias calling from Brazil.
Anja
You might remember Sonia from the third episode of my podcast. She told us about the lives of waste pickers around the world – the millions of people who make a living out of collecting and sorting waste, especially in developing countries. Sonia works for WIEGO, an organization supporting these informal workers. She’s following the negotiations for the plastics treaty very closely.
Sonia Dias
It’s so important. From WIEGO’s perspective, one of the most important thing is for informal waste pickers to have a seat at the negotiation table. And they are in fact participating in the intergovernmental discussions. And most of the issues that they have been raising I guess we could frame them as a just transition, as a demand for a just transition into the plastic treaty. Which means to have a roadmap in which all the potential impacts of implementing the plastic treaty is taking into consideration in terms of how those policies, the plastic reduction policies, might affect waste pickers. How can we design interventions to curb or to reduce plastic pollution in ways that can protect the livelihoods of waste-pickers?
Anja
Working with waste can be very dangerous, and many of the waste pickers live below the poverty line. But this is the job they rely on. So to protect the them, the global plastics treaty needs to include their needs, Sonia says. Because some approaches to tackle the pollution might create opportunities for them, while others could destroy their markets.
Sonia Dias
We have laid out what we’re calling as the building blocks for a just transition into the plastic treaty. And this includes, you know, the relevance of having an inclusive governance in the treaty, the very crucial issue of supporting workers organizing. One of the most important building block is for the treaty to address the needs for workers to build their capacity to perform their roles in curbing plastic pollution. And of course, one of the most important thing is around social protection and issues on OHS, occupational health and safety, which is so crucial for waste pickers. And most of all, the issue of fair remuneration. Workers, informal workers are those who are subject to the highest risks, and they have the lowest pay. So there are a number of demands that the plastic treaty should address in order to build a just transition roadmap.
Music – Small World Reveals by Blue Dot Sessions
Sound of a pen, writing
Tridibesh Dey
I want to see a more robust inclusion of waste workers and recyclers within the treaty negotiations…
Anja
Tridibesh Dey sent me a similar message from the University of Aarhus in Denmark.
Tridibesh Dey
…and within collaborative partnerships that might come out of these talks at various scales of policy and practice.
Anja
Tridibesh is an anthropologist studying plastic remediation. This means following policies, technology, and innovation that claim to reduce the impacts of plastics. As part of his research, Tridibesh has collaborated extensively with waste pickers and plastic recyclers in India.
Tridibesh Dey
Waste workers are at the frontline handling these most hazardous chemical cocktails that accumulate at the end of the plastics value chain. Therefore, they are most intensely exposed every day to the suite of risks that plastic pollution engenders. Therefore, they are truly entitled to a voice at the highest level.
Anja
Tridibesh doesn’t see waste workers just as victims. They have valuable knowledge and experience, he says, that could help us understand the challenges and solutions of plastic pollution.
Tridibesh Dey
Waste workers tend to know why and how different categories of waste can get mixed up, for example, or how toxic chemicals could pass on compounded into new recycled products, or how chemical recycling technologies could simply redistribute toxic contents of plastic waste that really aren’t going anywhere.
Anja
Tridibesh calls for a change of perspective. ‘See waste workers as experts’, he told me. Because they have this first-hand knowledge about what really happens downstream, when plastic becomes waste. Tridibesh envisions them as practical advisors to create better materials for reuse and recycling. For that to happen, though, their voices need to be heard.
Music – Neon Drip by Blue Dot Sessions
But waste workers are not the only ones demanding a say in the plastic treaty. While their income is based on plastics becoming waste, others profit from the production. So what about them, these much bigger players? Should they get a say?
Martin Wagner
Do we want to give the industry that has created the problem a seat at the table?
Anja
Martin Wagner is an associate professor of biology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Martin Wagner
The chemical industry, including the plastic industry, has a very long history of preventing or at least watering down policies that interfere with their business.
Anja
In his many years of research on plastics and chemicals, Martin has seen a lot. And he’s closely watching how the industry approaches issues that threaten their bottom-line.
Martin Wagner
So what we know from historians, is that since the 1950s, the industry has developed a very sophisticated system to defend their products and that system includes lobbyists, consultants but also scientists – and that what’s concerning me most. What chemical industry has learnt from, indeed, the tobacco industry is that one method is very, very powerful. And we call that method the manufacture of doubt. So what does that mean? Essentially, really manufacturing doubt is preventing scientific consensus on one of their products from happening, or at least to create the appearance that there is no scientific consensus on the harms that the industry’s products can do.
Anja
In order to do this, Martin says, the industry produces its own research, and creates its own scientific circle.
Martin Wagner
They organise their own scientific workshops on plastic pollution, on microplastics specifically, where they invite academics as well, they fund independent scientists and they hire so-called independent consultants that keep highlighting the limitations of the science of plastic pollution. So they culture this club of people that are, they call it, aligned with their own views and their own agenda.
Anja
The toolbox of casting doubt also includes critizising the methods of academic scientists, Martin told me.
Martin Wagner
They do denounce independent science, for instance they call them out for doing junk science and that is something that I have quite some personal experience with as well.
Anja
When it comes to the plastics treaty, the big question for Martin is: how do policy makers deal with vested interests in the negotiations? Some people argue that the plastic industry has a role to play in solving the problem. As the polluters, they bear responsibility. They also have privileged knowledge which could help solve the problem – like on the chemicals used in plastics. Their profits can provide the resources and money needed. But other people take a very different stance. They say the industry shows no clear intention to really contribute to the solutions. So they should be shut out of the process.
Martin Wagner
And to be honest, I’m seeing both sides here, but I tend to agree with the later position. Given the history of the whole sector to meddle with the science to fit their business agendas, given the history of the sector to lobby for regulation that is not in any way restricting their businesses, I think the plastic industry’s role in the negotiations should be as minor as possible.
Music Vengeful by Blue Dot Sessions
Anja
Worried about interests interfering with the negotiations, scientists like Richard, Bethany and Martin have started to organize. They have formed an independent science body called the Scientists Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty. Trisia Farrelly, an anthropologist from Massey University in Aotearoa / New Zealand, is a member of the Coalition’s Steering Committee.
Trisia Farrelly
As an organized collective of international scientists, what we plan to do, what we will do is to provide member states with quick turnaround, rapid, critical peer-review of scientific claims about safe, toxic-free, just, regenerative and effective responses to the plastic pollution crisis.
Anja
The coalition started with a declaration signed by over 500 scientists and institutions. It highlighted that many of the UN countries were focusing way too much on waste management and recycling. But production, consumption and disposal all had to be equally considered to solve plastic pollution, the scientists argued. To work together, they formed the Scientists’ Coalition.
Trisia Farrelly
Why was it established? It was established because obviously because of the need identified in the declaration, but also because we’d seen UNEP endorsement of reports which had contributions from plastic polluter funded scientists and organizations and others who may or may not have been able to really fully exercise their academic freedom and the roles that they held and in their contributions to these reports. So this is why we set up the Scientists’ Coalition.
Anja
The Coalition now has over 200 members from more than 40 countries. It is hosted by the International Knowledge Hub Against Plastic Pollution. In order to ensure their independence, all members have to declare any conflicts of interest, including industry and state funding. Indigenous scientists as well as citizen scientists are invited to contribute, to ensure the broadest expertise possible. The scientists hope that this way, the path to an effective plastics treaty can be supported.
Music – Small World Reveals by Blue Dot Sessions
Sound of a pen, writing
Rebecca Altman
If a treaty defines the problem historically, then it would also define the problem of plastics holistically – it would understand that plastics can’t just be fixed at the downstream site through better waste management or better recycling, because then it would only be dealing with part of what is so troubling today about plastics and its human rights and human health and planetary health implications.
Anja
Rebecca Altman is a writer from the United States, with a PhD in environmental sociology. She has written for Orion, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post, and is currently finishing her first book about the history of plastics. It will be personal, because back in the 1960s, Rebecca’s father worked at a plastics plant in New Jersey. In her research, Rebecca travels back another century in time, to the beginnings of the industry in the 19th Century.
Rebecca Altman
Looking back at historical data, we see that plastics have always been global. And even a century before plastics became disposable goods, single-use plastics, short-term use containers, back in the days when they made durable goods, they still posed problems. And those problems stem from extraction, colonial landtakings, natural resource depletion, land-use mismanagement, toxics exposures to both communities and to workers – it just all goes to say that plastics have always been a bigger issue than waste, and waste is a huge issue…but there are so many other issues that need to be addressed as well, relating to human rights and environmental health and environmental justice that goes all the way back to the beginning.
Music – Pelliu by Blue Dot Sessions
Anja
In the beginning, there was rubber – a natural latex. It was an amazing material, harvested from the sap of the caoutchouc tree, which the Indigenous peoples of South America had long known. But in the temperate climate of the Northern Hemisphere, it wasn’t of much use – it either got brittle or sticky. Raincoats were basically melting in the summer. So rubber took a while to gain traction in Europe and North America.
Rebecca Altman
Plastics history begins in the middle decades of the 19th Century with hard rubber. Yes, it is sourced from trees, but then it is modified through heat and through chemistry into durable, moldable materials. And these materials are produced on an industrial scale and their raw materials are sourced on a global scale.
Anja
You might ask: Why do we travel back in time now and talk about – rubber? What Rebecca argues here is that the plastic problem starts way earlier than we usually think.
Rebecca
My bookshelves are lined with books about the history of rubber extraction and the various troubling human rights violations and labor systems by which this rubber was produced. Rubber factories in the 19th century were incredibly toxic worksites – because of naphtha exposures, because of carbon disulfide exposures.
Anja
These were chemicals used in the production of rubber. And they turned out to be harmful to human health. A hundred and fifty years ago, before our synthetic throwaway society had even been born, early plastics were already part of an unjust and unhealthy system that spanned the globe.
Music Trenton Channel by Blue Dot Sessions
Rubber is just one example. There was also celluloid used in film and photography, viscose and rayon for textiles and cellophane for packaging – all these were early forms of plastics. They were made from renewable resources, so we’d call them bioplastics today. But their production also caused many problems: displacement, deforestation, as well as environmental and health issues. And that’s why the plastics treaty needs to embrace a holistic approach, Rebecca says – one that goes far beyond waste.
Rebecca Altman
Defining the problem of plastic pollution historically actually adds another century’s worth of data, of evidence to the call for a human-rights approach, to a call for a focus on the toxicity of the chemicals and intermediates and catalysts required to make plastics.
Anja
If you’d like to read more about this, Rebecca’s article in Science magazine on the topic is really insightful. It’s called “the myth of historical bio-based plastics”.
Music – Cloudbank by Blue Dot Sessions
Lesley Henderson
Hi, Anja. It’s Lesley Henderson calling from University of Strathclyde in Scotland. We already know a lot about the negative impacts of plastics in the environment, but we now really need an international global treaty which focuses on the social dimensions of plastics and which really foregrounds the way in which plastics are embedded within society and which uses this unique opportunity, I think, to really redefine our relationship with plastics.
Anja
I share Lesley’s hope: the global treaty could be a turning point in the plastic story. For that, it will need to be ambitious, broad, and binding. To tackle plastic pollution we will need more than a voluntary agreement on waste. We need something that really works in practice and considers all aspects of plastic pollution.
Lesley Henderson
We know that technical solutions are not likely to be sufficient to solve this problem, interdisciplinary approaches which combine the natural, the physical, the social sciences as well as humanities can work in combination to give us a more holistic approach to identify solutions, but also identify potential obstacles to policies.
Anja
Global regulation will be one step. The next, and even more crucial one, will be for countries to actually implement and enforce these new rules. That needs to be accompanied by very clear communication strategies, Lesley says – adapted to the cultural context and the way people live their lives.
Lesley Henderson
So, for example, it’s really important that we monitor media coverage and that any kind of scare stories which might operate to undermine particular policies and regulations can be challenged. Communications, that’s really important, need to be open and transparent and also based on the best available evidence, even where there is no scientific consensus, it’s important that this is also part of the communication strategy and that that is also openly communicated, however difficult that might be.
Anja
Many different networks of expertise and action are now mobilizing. Waste worker organizations call for a just transition to protect their members’ livelihoods. Academic experts caution to carefully consider potential solutions in order to avoid further damage to people and the planet. The Scientists’ Coalition could enable and inform faster and fact-based political action without conflicts of interest. In the best case, these different groups will help shape a treaty that works, and that is really up to the huge challenge plastic pollution poses. Of course, there are still many open questions. What exactly should the plastics treaty say? What are the antidotes to plastic pollution it should prescribe? More, in the next episode.
Music – Plink by Dorian Roy
Anja
This was Plastisphere, the podcast on plastics, people and the planet. My name is Anja Krieger. If you enjoyed this episode, you can support me via PayPal. Rate and review my podcast on iTunes, to help others find the show. If this episode inspired you for your own publications, please credit Plastisphere.
This episode featured messages from Richard Thompson, Bethany Carney Almroth, Sonia Dias, Tridibesh Dey, Martin Wagner, Trisia Farrelly, Rebecca Altman and Lesley Henderson. Thanks to all of experts for taking the time to reflect and record their thoughts.
Introductory sound and voices, as well as original audio from the first INC in Uruguay came from the Youtube channels of the United Nations Environmental Program. You heard the voices of Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of UNEP, Keriako Tobik, the Cabinet Secretary for the Ministry of Environment and Forestry in Kenya, Amina J. Mohammed, the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Espen Barth Eide, the UNEA president and Jyoti Mathur-Filipp, Executive Secretary of the INC. The tango group that played at the INC opening ceremony was the El Sordre National Ballet Company of Uruguay.
Huge thanks go to Baldeep Kaur for wise and valuable feedback, Maren von Stockhausen for the cover, Dorian Roy for the theme and Blue Dot Sessions for thei music under a Creative Commons license. All links to the songs are in the transcript, which you can find on plastisphere.earth and in the description of this episode. The Scientists’ Coalition invites anybody interested to contact them on scientistscoalition – dot – org. That’s it – see you soon!