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Call for global treaty to end production of ‘virgin’ plastic by 2040

Scientists say agreement must cover extraction of raw materials and pollution that blights seas and land

Science: A binding global agreement to address the life cycle of plastics

Amid the global plastic pollution crisis, a growing number of governments and nongovernmental actors are proposing a new global treaty. In February 2021, at the fifth meeting of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA)—the world’s highest-level decision-making body on the environment—many governments spoke in favour of an international agreement to combat plastic pollution. In the past, the international community tended to view the plastics problem from a predominantly ocean-focused and waste-centered perspective. However, plastics are increasingly found in all environmental media, including terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere, as well as human matrices, including lungs and placenta. We therefore argue for a new international legally binding agreement that addresses the entire life cycle of plastics, from extraction of raw materials to legacy plastic pollution. Only by taking this approach can efforts match the magnitude and transboundary nature of this escalating problem and its social, environmental, and economic impacts. Targeting the full life cycle of plastics allows for a more equitable distribution of the costs and benefits of relevant actions across the global value chain.

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Guardian: ‘A binding global treaty is needed to phase out the production of “virgin” or new plastic by 2040, scientists have said. The solution to the blight of plastic pollution in the oceans and on land would be a worldwide agreement on limits and controls, they say in a special report in the journal Science. Since the 1950s about 8bn tonnes of plastic has been produced. The effects are everywhere. One of the reports authors, Nils Simon, said: “Plastics are ubiquitously found in increasing amounts worldwide, including in terrestrial environments and even inside the human body.”The authors say the very properties that have made plastic an apparently essential modern material also make it a serious environmental threat.

Science senior editor Jesse Smith, writes: “As for much new technology, their development and proliferation occurred with little consideration for their impacts, but now it’s impossible to deny their dark side as we confront a rapidly growing plastic pollution problem.

“The time for preventing plastic pollution is long past – the time for changing the future of plastics in our world, however, is now.”

The report calls for a new global treaty “to cover the entire lifecycle of plastics, from the extraction of the raw materials needed for its manufacture to its legacy pollution”.

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