September 5,
2024
Plastic waste is
pummeling the South Pacific, polluting coral reefs and lagoons, washing up in
tons on sandy shores and accumulating in a giant mass in the ocean. Ocean
currents put Pacific Island nations at the front lines of the global plastic
pollution crisis, even though the islands’ 2.3 million inhabitants contribute
less than 1.3 percent of the world’s plastic waste. In just five years, experts
predict that up to 53 million tons of plastic pollution will impact the lives
of Pacific Islanders annually.
Residents on boats collect recyclable plastics from the heavily polluted
Citarum River in Batujajar, Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, on June 12,
2024.
In March 2022,
the United Nations Environment Assembly agreed to begin negotiating a legally
binding treaty between 175 countries that will determine how the world deals
with such plastic pollution. The fifth and final negotiating session is now set
to start in late November this year. Recognizing the scope and severity of the
crisis, delegates for the 14 Pacific Island countries have been at the
forefront of the international plastic treaty talks, advocating for strict
limits on plastic production and the need to set tangible goals for waste
management.
Other countries,
including Rwanda, Peru and European Union nations, have also pushed for
ambitious goals and plastic production caps. But the United States, alongside
oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia and China, has historically
opposed these proposals. The oil and gas industry wants delegates to carve out
a treaty that focuses on things like plastic tracking and recycling rather than
decreasing production — even though, for decades, plastics companies knew that
recycling was an overwhelming failure.
But in August,
in what could be a major breakthrough for the future of the planet, President
Joe Biden’s administration indicated it would support plastic production limits
and increased controls on the toxic chemicals that are used in the plastic
production process.
Environmental
groups praised the announcement, while industry groups like the American
Chemistry Council — which has spent nearly $10 million in lobbying efforts so
far this year — lambasted the administration for “caving” to environmentalists’
wishes and “betray[ing] U.S. manufacturing.”
While the Biden
administration’s announcement gained little attention in a crowded news cycle,
this shift in approach carries urgent importance. Less than 10 percent of
plastic waste is currently recycled globally; the rest winds up dumped or
incinerated, harming communities and polluting the Earth. If the years of
negotiations yield a treaty that focuses on recycling — not production caps —
as a solution to the crisis, then the world will be digging itself into an even
deeper plastic pollution hole. And it would take a huge amount of additional
international coordination to climb back out.
Plastic, which
is derived from fossil fuels, is toxic throughout every stage of its life
cycle, from production to disposal. The extraction and refinement of fossil
fuels for plastic production emits hundreds of millions of metric tons of
greenhouse gases each year, heating up the atmosphere and fueling the climate
crisis. Research from the Center for International Environmental Law emphasized
that the global plastics treaty needs “to incorporate ambitious obligations
that specifically target global plastic production” if we are going to keep
global warming below the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold.
Plastics also
contain a slew of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals, which are released during
production at facilities that, in the United States, are often placed in
low-income communities and communities of color. In January, a report by
Amnesty International found that the Houston Ship Channel — a major hub for
fossil fuels in the United States — is a racial “sacrifice zone,” where an
immense and disproportionate burden of pollution is placed on people of color
by fossil fuel companies. The report noted that the scale of harmful pollution
amounts to a human rights violation.
At the end of
plastics’ life cycle, wealthy nations, including the United States and the
United Kingdom, frequently export their waste to poorer nations in a phenomenon
that has been dubbed “waste colonialism.” Often, these countries have fewer
resources to manage and tame the vast amounts of trash than the rich countries
that are sending it. The term was coined as far back as 1989, when several
African nations expressed concerns at the United Nations Environmental Program
Basel Convention that wealthy countries were using countries in Africa as
dumping grounds for hazardous waste.
Nevertheless,
plastics and discarded electronic devices, known as e-waste, are increasingly
piling up in toxic landfills across the Global South. In Kenya, waste pickers
earn a living by scavenging these e-waste dumps for metal scraps, a hazardous
process that leaves them vulnerable to infections, cancer and lung diseases.
According to the UN Environmental Assembly, it is waste pickers like these —
people in poverty lacking health or labor protections — who are responsible for
recycling 60 percent of the world’s plastic waste.
After China
banned plastic imports in 2018, waste streams began flowing to Thailand,
Malaysia and Vietnam — though these countries have announced plans to ban
imports in the near future too, diverting it to places like Myanmar. An
investigation by Lighthouse Reports released in January found that low-income
communities in Myanmar are suffering from the influx of plastic, which is
shipped from countries including the United States, Canada and Germany.
“There is no
making this better; there is no responsible plastic waste export,” Jan Dell, a
plastic waste expert and independent chemical engineer, told Lighthouse
Reports.
It is clear that
1989, or sooner, was the best time to enact ambitious, meaningful plastic
production caps. The second-best time is today. The United States has taken a
major step forward in this goal, and by breaking from its previous stance, the
U.S. can hopefully pressure other powerful countries to do the same. Still, it
is unclear what the outcome of the talks will be in December, or whether the
Biden administration will make good on its word. Meanwhile, as UN delegates
have convened to hammer out the global agreement, plastic production has
continued to increase. It’s now at 460 million tons per year — an exorbitant
amount of waste that will overwhelmingly impact communities in the Global
South, who have spent years trying to stymie the flow.
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