Negotiations on plastic waste: UN contract on the brink

After a tenth struggle for a global contract to contain the devastating plastic pollution, the result of the UN Conference in Geneva is initially lean: Without the last hours before the period expired, efforts threaten to fail. The negotiations should end on Thursday. For the European Union, environmental commissioner Jessika Roswall said: “The EU is ready to act, but not at all costs.”

With dismay, dozens of countries reacted to a last-minute draft contract of the conference chairman on Wednesday. From this, practically all ambitious goals and requirements for governments had been deleted. “This text is unacceptable and does not even provide the minimum that is necessary to deal with the urgency of the challenge,” warned the Danish delegate on behalf of the 27 EU countries. “Inacceptable” and “Red Lines exceeded” – so numerous government agents were expressed.

More than 120 countries are behind the demand to limit the use and production of plastic to a sustainable level. The aim is to pull certain disposable plastic products out of circulation like straws or cups from styrofoam worldwide. For oil -producing countries, the topic of production limitation is a red cloth. You see your business waning. Plastic is mainly made of oil. Instead, the countries only want to accept an agreement on dealing with waste.

“The problem of international plastic pollution is gigantic,” said the State Secretary in the German Federal Environment Ministry, Jochen Flasbarth, on the eve of the final day. “The quantities produced are not sustainable. The always adding new plastic must find limits.”

Plastic flashes and the environment and poisoned ecosystems, kills fish and other living things and endangers human health. The smallest particles are increasingly found in organs and also in the brain. According to studies, the nano and microplasty particles affect the immune system, among other things, can settle in arteries and promote inflammation.

The United Nations Environmental Meeting, the highest decision -making body for environmental issues, decided in 2022. The mandate states that the contract should include the entire life cycle of the plastic, from production, to design to disposal. For ambitious such as Germany and the EU, this means that less produce, use and recycle plastic products several times, and what is left over to dispose of in an environmentally friendly way.

“We like plastic, it is a great product, and we will continue to need it,” said the EU environmental commissioner Roswall. “But we don’t like plastic pollution.” It must finally be ended.

The new draft contract is only a management plan for waste, complained Kenya, the Philippines and numerous other countries. An agreement on the smallest common denominator is not an option, said Great Britain. Even Saudi Arabia oil producer, which has long fought a production limitation, criticized the text.

“The text is a gift to the petrochemical industry and a betrayal of humanity,” said the head of the delegation of the Environmental Organization Greenpeace, Graham Forbes. The root of evil, the tireless plastic production, is ignored.