All at sea? A global plastics treaty is needed to fill the gaps in the existing conventions

Plastic is the wonder material that changed the world. Since the 1950s, humans have produced 8.3 billion metric tonnes of the product. It’s filling the biosphere at an astonishing rate.

Although plastic has been identified as an environmental pollutant for decades, production keeps rising. Cheap, light and versatile, it’s everywhere.

Environmental lawyer Gerry Nagtzaam has compiled some alarming statistics:

• Globally, only 9% of plastics are recycled.

• Eight million tonnes of plastic enters the world’s oceans each year.

• If plastic production keeps growing at the present rate, there will be more plastic than fish in our seas (measured by weight) by 2050.

Plastic waste includes macroplastics (bigger than five millimetres) and microplastics, which float invisibly in the air we breathe, and in our waterways.

Plastic is so ubiquitous, it’s seeped into our bodies. The US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that BPA – an industrial chemical used to make some plastics, and found in the epoxy resin that lines canned food – can be detected in 95% of the population.

So what can be done?

Dr Nagtzaam says while existing international treaties attempt to limit plastic waste, they do so in a piecemeal fashion. No treaty covers all aspects of the plastic problem. A global plastic pollution treaty could be the answer.

Existing treaties with the potential to regulate plastic waste include the Basel Convention; the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea; the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships; the Ocean Plastics Charter; the UN Resolution on Marine Litter and Microplastics; and the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution.

Dr Nagtzaam says “we’re still at the beginning phase” of regulating plastic production internationally.

“We realise there’s a problem, but we’re not quite sure whether or not the regulations and the laws that we have are enough to deal with it.”

He expects that international consensus on the best way to tackle plastic waste will “take a few years, and will be subject to massive pushback by entrenched interests”.

The third meeting of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) deliberated on the issue in Nairobi in December 2017.

The assembly hedged its bets. It recommended that existing legal instruments be examined as a means of limiting plastic waste – but if that attempt failed, a “novel instrument could complement existing conventions”.

Such an instrument (or treaty) would also provide certainty to the plastics industry, which presently achieves annual revenues of $US750 billion.

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Read more: Waste not, want not: Moving towards the circular economy

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In the meantime, the Basel Convention is a good start, Dr Nagtzaam says. Its plastic regulations will take effect from January 2021, mandating that states wishing to export most mixed and contaminated plastics will need the consent of importing states (as is already the case with other hazardous waste).

The treaty is designed to prevent wealthy nations from sending low-quality plastic waste to private firms in less-developed countries. The aim is to encourage plastic recycling and to reduce marine pollution.

Basel Convention a good starting point

Dr Nagtzaam points out that states including China, Thailand and Malaysia are already refusing to accept “mixed rubbish pollution, including plastic” from the US and Australia.

“A lot of people think Basel just stops the trade totally,” he says. “It doesn’t, but it does give them tools if states wish to do that.” The US has not ratified the Basel Convention.

The marine pollution convention can be invoked to prevent the dumping of plastics at sea, but Dr Nagtzaam points out that 80% of marine pollution comes from land-based sources.

The UN Convention of the Law of the Sea seeks to prevent polluting marine runoffs, but doesn’t specifically mention plastic, nor does it mention how stringent national laws should be.

The UN Resolution on Marine Litter and Microplastics does not include hard targets (the US, India and China argued instead for voluntary compliance at a domestic level).

In 2018, the Ocean Plastics Charter called for all plastics to be recyclable, and for all manufactured plastic goods to have at least 50% recycled content by 2030.

Twenty-six states have signed, including the European Union, the UK and Canada, as well as companies such as Ikea, Nestle, PepsiCo and Walmart. But the giant plastic producers, the US and Japan, have not joined them.

The danger posed by atmospheric microplastics is still imperfectly understood, Dr Nagtzaam says. The Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution could be expanded to tackle the problem – but like some other international treaties, it wasn’t designed to tackle plastics.

A global plastics treaty could fill the gaps in the existing conventions, and might overlap with them, he says. He predicts it could take “five to 10 years for there to be a real pull or desire for this to be dealt with globally”.

In the meantime, growing awareness of plastic pollution could help modify plastic consumption in individuals and states.

“You need countries to explore what is going on, and the best example of this is probably the EU, which is trying very hard to implement what are sometimes called circular economy principles,” Dr Nagtzaam says.

A global fund to support a treaty

He argues that a plastics treaty would need to be verified, ideally via a technical scientific body capable of monitoring national targets and action plans. Signatories would share technical knowledge and best-practice protocols.

The body would be supported by a global fund, and states most affected by plastic pollution could be compensated by a global scheme, and would receive financial help to tackle the problem and to monitor targets.

In the meantime, how can we stop the planet from being buried in plastic?

“We need a system that captures as much virgin plastic as possible, and find ways to recycle it,” he says. “We also need to develop, wherever possible, biodegradable plastics. And bluntly, as a society, we need to use much less plastic.”

Global Plastic Pollution Regulation, by Gerry Nagtzaam with Elena Karataeva, Steve Kourbas and Geert Van Calster, is to be published by Edward Elgar in late 2021.