Author: Beatriz Santos

The European Council and Parliament reached a provisional political agreement on Nov. 17 to ban exports of non-hazardous plastic waste to countries outside the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of mostly rich countries. The proposed regulation builds on the provisions of the Basel Convention that already bans exports of hazardous waste from the EU to third countries. The European Council said in a statement that since the adoption of the regulation in 2006, exports from the EU to non-OECD countries have ‘increased considerably’. According to the Basel Action Network (BAN), EU plastic waste exports to non-OECD countries rose to 50 million kg/month in May 2023 from 28.1 million kg/month in May 2022, equivalent to 303 shipping containers per day.

Author: Tatiana Schlossberg

Someday, if future forms of intelligent life look for evidence of human existence in the 20th and 21st centuries, they should have an easy time finding us in the geologic record. Just look for the plastic. Between 1950 and 2021, humanity produced about 11 billion metric tons of virgin plastic — that’s the weight of 110,000 U.S. aircraft carriers. Only about 2 billion tons of this is still in use. The rest — some 8.7 billion tons — is waste: 71 percent has ended up in landfills or somewhere else in the environment, including the ocean; 12 percent has been recycled; 17 percent has been incinerated. At the rate we’re going, global plastic waste will rise 60 percent by 2050.

Author: EHN Editors

An examination of recycled plastic pellets from several countries found they contain hundreds of hazardous chemicals, according to this recent study published by Data in Brief.

Author: Charles Pekow

The third session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC) ended on Nov. 19 in deep disappointment for many environmentalists. A few petrochemical-producing countries and corporations obstructed the plastic treaty proceedings, which wound up focusing on arguments and procedure instead of substance. INC is charged with hammering out a worldwide treaty on plastic pollution by 2025. Delegates from 161 countries and 318 “observer organizations” attended this month’s session in Nairobi, Kenya. Polluters were especially well represented. The Center for International Environmental Law counted 143 lobbyists, some on official rosters of nations, who work for the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries, a 36% increase over the last session. (The figure includes those representing trade associations and other organizations funded by the industries.)

Author: Josh Templeman

The European Commission (EC) has agreed a deal to prohibit the export of plastic waste to countries outside OECD by the year 2026. According to DG Environment this will apply to material sent from the UK to European ports. The provisional EC commitment has been announced at the third Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) in Nairobi, Kenya (13-17 November) - the UN-led process to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution.

Author: Sarah J. Morath

There is no shortage of news about plastic’s ubiquity or its harms. Microplastics are in clouds, drinking water, playgrounds and our blood. Marine mammals are entangled in and ingest plastic at alarming rates. Plastic exacerbates climate change and biodiversity loss, and high-income countries increasingly consume and export used plastic to lower-income countries for disposal. The amount of plastic entering the marine environment is on track to double by 2024, and solutions, like plastic recycling and voluntary reduction efforts by businesses, have fallen short. These realities necessitate coordinated global action.  

Author: Darren Major

The federal government is planning to appeal a court decision that quashed an order-in-council listing manufactured plastic items as toxic. Last week, a Federal Court judge ruled that the government's move to list all plastic items as toxic was "unreasonable and unconstitutional." Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault and Justice Minister Arif Virani announced the government's intention to appeal in a joint statement on Monday.

Author: #BreakFreeFromPlastic

Nairobi, Kenya – The third meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-3) for a global agreement to end plastic pollution concluded today at the UNEP headquarters in Nairobi. Despite a mandate for a revised draft, Member States failed to reach an agreement on priorities for intersessional work ahead of INC-4, despite an 11th-hour attempt, jeopardizing significant advancements for the treaty process.  With the petrochemical influence in the treaty negotiations, including the ‘low ambition’ of a group of ‘like-minded’ plastic-producing countries, and the lack of ambition by the so-called ‘high ambition’ countries, the INC-3 concluded without concrete headway towards the mandate adopted at the fifth United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA 5.2) to negotiate a comprehensive and legally binding treaty that will cover measures along the entire life cycle of plastic.

Author: Duncan Miriri

NAIROBI, Nov 19 (Reuters) - A third round of United Nations negotiations to try to deliver the world's first treaty to control plastic pollution has drawn more than 500 proposals from governments, participants said on Sunday. Negotiators, who spent a week meeting in the Kenyan capital at talks known as INC3, have until the end of next year to strike a deal for the control of plastics, which produce an estimated 400 million tonnes of waste every year.

Author: Michael Copley

Negotiations over a global plastics treaty ended in Kenya with little progress toward reining in plastic waste, as environmental groups criticized oil and gas producers for blocking a final decision on how to advance the deliberations. Members of the United Nations want to finalize a treaty by the end of 2024 to reduce the vast amount of plastic waste that piles up in landfills and the environment. Plastic production is expected to soar in the coming years, and almost every piece of it is made from chemicals derived from fossil fuels.

Author: CIEL

NAIROBI — A week of negotiations in Nairobi left all options on the table for a proposed Global Plastic Treaty but fell far short of the progress needed to deliver an ambitious treaty on an equally ambitious timeline. Governments that began the week with a “Zero Draft” of the treaty text and a clear mandate to agree on an active intersessional program of work are leaving eight days later with a “Revised Zero Draft” that has ballooned to 100 plus pages, with no intersessional agenda, and a clear warning that entertaining endless debate by those few who want to block progress at every turn is a recipe for inertia and eventual disaster. “This week made clear that an overwhelming majority of countries demand an ambitious treaty that covers the full lifecycle of plastics,” said CIEL President Carroll Muffett. “That treaty is still achievable in these talks, but only if negotiators acknowledge and confront the coordinated campaign by fossil fuel and petrochemical exporters to prevent real progress of any kind.”

Author: Jess Conard

Magic wands only exist in the world of Harry Potter and other fictional works, but the plastics and petrochemical industries would like you to believe otherwise. They’re increasingly touting what they call “chemical recycling,” or “advanced recycling,” as a magical way to make hard-to-recycle plastic waste disappear. This October, a report released by the environmental groups Beyond Plastics and the International Pollutants Elimination Network unmasked the truth and investigated the chemical recycling facilities in the United States, two of which are in Ohio.

Author: Greenpeace International

Nairobi, Kenya – The third session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC3) for a Global Plastics Treaty ends on a disappointing note for the fight against the plastic and climate crises. Graham Forbes, Greenpeace Head of Delegation to the Global Plastics Treaty negotiations and Global Plastics Campaign Lead at Greenpeace USA, said: “Plastic directly harms each of the 8.1 billion people on this fragile planet, but our leaders have effectively chosen to treat petrochemical companies as the only stakeholders worth listening to.”