Negotiators from 176 countries will gather in downtown Ottawa this week for the fourth round of talks to create a global treaty to eliminate plastic waste in less than 20 years.
Ottawa is hosting the fourth of five rounds of negotiations, with the goal of closing a deal before the end of the year.
The proliferation of plastics has been profound, as it is a preferred material largely for its affordability and longevity. But that also means it never goes away, and the impact on nature and growing concerns about human health are driving a push to get rid of plastic waste and eliminate the most problematic chemicals used to produce it.
Canada’s Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault played a crucial role in kick-starting plastic treaty talks in 2022 when he helped push a resolution at the United Nations Environment Assembly in Kenya. He remains adamant that a strong treaty is needed.
“We want to act as quickly as possible to eliminate plastic pollution,” he said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “I mean, the collective goal we’ve set is to do it by 2040, but I think from both an environmental perspective and a health perspective, the sooner the better.”
But Guilbeault is still reluctant to take a definitive position on the elephant in the negotiating room: a limit on plastic production.
“We want an ambitious treaty,” he said.
“I don’t think now is the time to start… getting stuck on certain things and saying, ‘Okay, well, this is it.’ Let’s have the conversation and see where we land.”
For many environmental and health organizations watching the conversations, the only way to solve the plastic crisis is to reduce the amount produced in the first place.
But that’s a no-go zone for the chemical and plastics production industries, whose members argue that alternatives to plastic are often more expensive, more energy-intensive and heavier.
Karen Wirsig, senior director of the plastics program at advocacy organization Environmental Defense, said plastic production will double by 2050 if left unchecked. Plastic waste could triple by 2060, she added.
“Plastic pollution is a global crisis that intensifies every day when we let the production and use of plastic go uncontrolled,” he said.
“The Earth and our health cannot afford to continue as before.”
The Organization for Economic Cooperation says global plastic production grew from 234 million tonnes in 2000 to 460 million tonnes in 2019, while plastic waste grew from 156 million tonnes to 353 million tonnes.
Globally, about half of that waste ends up in landfills, a fifth is incinerated, sometimes to generate electricity, and almost a tenth is recycled. More than a fifth are “mismanaged,” meaning they end up in places they shouldn’t be.
The problem of mismanagement is much worse in developing economies, where waste management programs are limited, if they exist at all. In some parts of Africa, the OECD said almost two-thirds of plastic waste is poorly managed, and in much of Asia almost half. That compares with less than a tenth in the world’s richest countries.
Adding to this problem is the fact that rich countries continue to export their garbage abroad despite international regulations in place to prevent this practice. Last fall, a Canadian Press investigation in partnership with Lighthouse Reports and journalists from Myanmar, Thailand and Europe found evidence of plastic food wrappers and Canadian plumbing parts in piles of trash surrounding homes and gardens in a city in Myanmar. .
In Canada, the OECD reported, more than 80 percent of plastic waste is landfilled and only six percent is recycled. Seven percent are poorly managed.
The evolving treaty has several areas of focus, including discussions on a limit on production, reducing the types of products most commonly found in nature and what are known as chemicals of concern.
A UN report prepared before the second round of talks on the treaty in Paris last June said that more than 13,000 chemicals are used to make plastics, and 10 groups of those chemicals are highly toxic and likely to leach through of their products. That includes flame retardants, ultraviolet stabilizers and additives used to make plastics harder, waterproof or stain-resistant.
Dr. Lyndia Dernis, a Montreal anesthesiologist and member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, said most plastic additives are endocrine disruptors, causing everything from diabetes and obesity to high blood pressure, infertility, cancer and immunological disorders.
Plastic is extremely common in medicine. When he begins an intravenous administration to a pregnant patient, for example, he said the material contains phthalates, “a very well-studied endocrine disruptor.”
“At the beginning of pregnancy, the girl’s reproductive system is in place, including all the eggs for the rest of her life. This means that when I start an IV, I am exposing three generations at once: the pregnant mother, her future baby girl. and that future baby’s babies,” she said.
Greenpeace and other environmental groups are calling for plastic production to be reduced by 75 percent from 2019 levels by 2040. Recycling, they argue, is a myth that doesn’t actually happen. Most of what Canadians throw away in their blue boxes still ends up in landfills.
Isabelle Des Chênes, vice-president of policy at the Chemical Industry Association of Canada, said society cannot prohibit or limit the disposal of plastic waste.
For Des Chênes, the key component of the treaty is to create a “circular economy” in which companies design products to be reused and recycled, rather than thrown away.
That includes investments in equipment to break down plastics into their original compounds for use again, as well as standardizing designs to make recycling possible, he said.
Des Chênes said that if you just look at potato chip bags, which are made of layers of different plastic polymers, those layers differ depending on the brand. It is easier to recycle those bags if there is consistency.
Guilbeault has promised that regulations in Canada will require minimum amounts of recycled content in plastics and consistency in design. Both will increase the recycling market, which is very limited in Canada. Updates on those promises could be expected during treaty talks, he hinted.
Some of Canada’s domestic efforts are on pause after the Federal Court ruled last fall that the government’s decision to designate all plastics as “toxic” was too broad. That designation is what Canada is using to ban the production and use of some single-use plastics, such as straws, grocery bags and takeout containers.
Canada is appealing that decision and Guilbeault said the case will have no bearing on federal positions during treaty talks.
At treaty talks in November in Kenya, the draft text of the agreement grew from 35 pages to more than 70. It currently contains a lot of repetition, with multiple options on line items reflecting different points of view.
Guilbeault said he would like to have that text “70 percent clean” by the end of the Ottawa round, leaving the tougher issues to be handled in parallel talks over the summer and then in final discussions in Korea in the fall.
Treaty talks in Ottawa begin Tuesday and will last seven days.