"The world will be “unable to cope” with the sheer volume of plastic waste a decade from now unless countries agree to curbs on production, the co-chair of a coalition of key countries has warned ahead of crunch talks on curbing global #PlasticPollution.
Progress has stalled over a row about the need for cuts to the $712bn plastics industry.
The final round of talks, which starts on Monday and is due to end on 1 December, is critical."
"The Alliance to End Plastic Waste (including ExxonMobil, Dow, Shell, TotalEnergies and ChevronPhillips, promised to divert 15m tonnes of plastic waste in five years to the end of 2023, by recycling, and creating a circular economy.
The data reveals the five companies alone produced 132m tonnes of polyethylene (PE) and PP (polypropylene) in five years – more than 1,000 times the weight of the 118,500 tonnes of waste plastic the alliance has actually removed."
"The new data was revealed as delegates prepared to meet in Busan, South Korea, to hammer out the world’s first treaty to cut plastic pollution: a legally binding global agreement to tackle plastic pollution across the entire plastics life cycle.
But the talks, which have been subject to heavy lobbying by the alliance and fossil fuel companies, are on a knife-edge in a row over whether caps to global plastic production will be included in the final treaty."
"Carbon Brief analysis shows that without any agreement to cut plastic production, emissions from plastics could consume half of the remaining carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels."
https://www.carbonbrief.org/five-charts-why-a-un-plastics-treaty-matters-for-climate-change/
Plastics currently cause triple the emissions of aviation.
If, for climate reasons, you're not hot on flying: I'm with you!
Let's also work on plastics.
Plastics are everywhere, so you can tackle it everywhere.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/five-charts-why-a-un-plastics-treaty-matters-for-climate-change/
#PFAS and #microplastics become more toxic when combined, research shows
"Study detects synergistic effect making substances more dangerous, raising alarm since humans are exposed to both"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/25/pfas-microplastics-toxic
Global plastic talks collapse as oil states rebel
"Although many issues are being discussed the key split is around Article 6 - whether there should be a commitment to cutting how much #plastic is produced, or just try and reduce plastic waste by increasing efforts to recycle."efforts to cut production levels."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c785l1nrpd1o
Who is surprised?
Oil and gas companies (including petrostates) are *counting* on plastics for their growth for the next decade. Cutting production? Forget it.
Oh, and:
"InfluenceMap, a think tank, found that the petrochemical industry intervened dozens of times on the treaty via company statements, social media and consultation responses, and 93% of those were unsupportive of efforts to cut production levels."
"Malaysia will ban plastic waste imports from the U.S. starting Tuesday because of America’s failure to abide by the Basel Convention treaty on international waste transfers, in a move that could have significant consequences for California.
The U.S. is one of just a handful of countries, including Fiji and Haiti, that hasn’t signed the pact.
Malaysia emerged as a major destination for U.S. waste after China banned American waste imports in 2018."
"Negotiations for a historic global treaty to end plastic pollution reconvene in August, three years after they began. The goal is ambitious: to set new, legally binding and equitable global agreements that change how plastics are produced and consumed.
Fossil fuels and subsidies are at the core of the plastic crisis."
"Plastics are a “grave, growing and under-recognised danger” to human and planetary health, a new expert review has warned. The world is in a “plastics crisis”, it concluded, which is causing disease and death from infancy to old age and is responsible for at least $1.5tn (£1.1tn) a year in health-related damages."
"The driver of the crisis is a huge acceleration of plastic production, which has increased by more than 200 times since 1950 and is set to almost triple again to more than a billion tonnes a year by 2060. While plastic has many important uses, the most rapid increase has been in the production of single-use plastics, such as drinks bottles and fast-food containers."
More than 98% of plastics are made from fossil oil, gas and coal.
Add the $1.5tn health costs of plastics to the $ 7tn annual cost of burning fossil fuels (subsidies, health costs, etc, but not counting climate costs), and the case for stopping the subsidies to the fossil fuel industry becomes that much stronger.
What if we redirected this at least $ 8.5 tn A YEAR to the global climate fund?
"Fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists outnumber the combined diplomatic delegations of all 27 European Union nations and the EU combined (233). Major fossil fuel and chemical companies and their lobbyists are particularly well represented.
Nineteen fossil fuel and chemical lobbyists have secured places in the national delegations of Egypt (6), Kazakhstan (4), China (3), Iran (3), Chile (2), and the Dominican Republic (1)."
Chemical pollution:
Many of these chemicals are derived from fossil fuels.
"When these chemicals contaminate our bodies, the results can be disastrous. The report found there were correlational or causal data linking widely used chemicals with threats to human reproductive, immune, neurological, cardiovascular, respiratory, liver, kidney and metabolic systems.
“One of the main things that came out strongly was links between pesticide exposure and reproductive issues."
"A new document reveals that one of the world’s largest plastic producers, DuPont, acknowledged as early as 1974 that recycling its plastic products was not possible.
This new discovery also comes against the backdrop of two pending lawsuits alleging that U.S. plastic producers have deceived the public about the feasibility of recycling since the 1980s."
Thanks to @benjamingeer for the link.
