Create a global package to solve the plastic problem

According to the United Nations, plastic production has grown from 2 million metric tons in 1950 to approx. 400 million in 2024. This number is expected to triple by 2060. Only 10 percent of this plastic is currently recycled and reused. The rest will remain in our environment for centuries, polluting the planet, from the oceans to the mountains, contaminating food chains and human bodies, where it risks damaging our organs and brains.

In 2025, we will begin to put an end to plastic pollution. Since 2022, United Nations policymakers, representing more than 170 countries, have negotiated a legally binding agreement. Global Plastics Treaty address the entire life cycle of plastics, from design to production to disposal. This treatise shares many of the mechanisms present in the 1987 Montreal Protocolwhich eventually led to the phasing out of CFCs, the chemicals responsible for ozone depletion. As such, it can be as successful, despite the opposition to it.

The treaty was supposed to be finalized by the fifth and final session, in Busan, South Korea, at the end of November 2024. Until now, perhaps unsurprisingly, the negotiations were polarized. At the time of writing, the draft treaty includes two options regarding its general purpose: The first, more ambitious, aims to “end plastic pollution”; the second, on the other hand, aims to “protect human health and the environment from plastic pollution”.

The first option is defended by a group of countries that are part of the High Ambition Coalition to end plastic pollutionled by the Nordics, but also including countries such as Rwanda and Peru. Option two is preferred by major oil producers such as Saudi Arabia, who want to steer the focus of discussions towards plastic recycling and waste management, rather than their production. In August 2024, the United States, also a major producer of plastic and oil, announced a surprising policy change, now pledging to support limits on plastic production as well. Given how influential the Americans are, this new position will affect the treaty.

Agreement on option one would put us on a path very similar to that followed by the Montreal Protocol. Although it is unlikely at this point that the treaty will set concrete binding targets for the gradual decrease of plastic production, it undeniably sets the ambitious goal of ending plastic pollution. On the other hand, option two (“protect human health and the environment”) is a terribly vague goal, in part because we don’t really know for certain what the threshold for human health impacts is, and we may not know for a very long time.

Regardless, both options are a step forward. Both provide the necessary guidance for the plastics industry to develop better technologies. Option one, for example, will inspire companies to develop alternatives such as fully biodegradable and compostable materials designed to permanently replace plastic (especially single-use plastics such as shopping bags and plastic packaging, which make up the 35 percent of plastic use today). Option two would likely lead industry to develop more efficient ways to reduce the waste stream, such as improved recycling processes.

This driving technology is perhaps the most important aspect of the deal. The original 1987 Montreal Protocol, for example, set very conservative targets for reducing CFC production: 20 percent by 1994 and then 50 percent by 1998. At the time, these were seen as too slow for what was needed. to address the issue. But, crucially, the protocol also explicitly stated that such targets would be revised as new scientific technologies and alternatives became available. This has put pressure on the industry to develop technological solutions as companies compete to develop better products. In the end, those alternatives – such as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) that could be used in refrigeration while having a much smaller impact on the ozone layer – developed much more quickly than was expected that, just three years later, the countries met again to agree to phase out the use of CFCs completely by 2000.

By 2025, the Global Plastics Treaty will send a clear message to the plastics industry that it must change the way it does business. That will be the beginning of the end of plastic.