In a Science Letters article published on November 2, 2023, Mengjiao Wang from the University of Exeter, UK, and co-authors emphasized the need for the global plastics treaty to financially incentivize reduction, reuse, and redesign.
In March 2022, 175 nations agreed to develop a legally binding treaty to end plastic pollution by the end of 2024 (FPF reported). To develop the treaty, diplomats, scientists, industry representatives, activists, and other various participants and observers from across the world convene from November 13 to 19, 2023 for the third intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-3) in Nairobi, Kenya. For an overview of discussions at the second meeting see here. To guide INC-3, the United Nations published the Zero Draft of the Plastics treaty ahead of the meeting (FPF reported).
Wang and co-authors believe that this draft puts a focus on waste management and its financing (downstream solutions) while reduce, reuse, and redesign opportunities miss out (upstream and midstream). Although only around 10% of plastic is recycled, 88% of the investment capital for circularity goes into recycling and recovery, while only 4% goes into reuse solutions, the authors outline. “This imbalance threatens to escalate the problem of growing volume of plastic waste.”
Therefore, the scientists call for higher financial investment and incentives for upstream and midstream solutions such as sustainable product design, management, and reuse, which is in line with the zero waste strategy. As specific measures, they emphasize the treaty to include strong criteria for extended producer responsibility schemes (FPF reported) making plastic producers pay and including clear requirements for the whole life cycle of plastic products. Furthermore, “governments should then transparently implement the obligations, which would incentivize private entities to invest” in these solutions.
In the same Science Letters edition, scientists called for chemical simplification and increased transparency as an essential step towards safer recycling (FPF reported).
Reference
Wang, M. et al. (2023). “Finance plastics reuse, redesign, and reduction.” Nature Letters. DOI: 10.1126/science.adl4491
