Negotiators are gathering in Busan, South Korea, this week in a final push to forge a treaty to address the global crisis of plastic pollution.“We must end plastic pollution before plastic pollution ends us,” Kim Wan-sup, South Korea’s minister of environment, said during the opening session on Monday.
Led by Norway and Rwanda, 66 countries plus the European Union say they want to address the total amount of plastic on Earth by controlling its design, production, consumption and disposal.
Several countries, including island nations hard-hit by plastic pollution, are pushing for a more ambitious agreement that addresses unchecked growth in the production of plastics, most of which are made from fossil fuels.
But oil and plastic-producing countries and companies want the agreement to focus more on recycling measures, even though less than 10 percent of the 400 million tonnes of plastic produced every year is currently recycled, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
That leaves hundreds of millions of tonnes of plastic that can end up in landfill or incinerators, or in natural environments anywhere from the deep sea to the peaks of Mount Everest.
Guests gather prior to the opening of the Fifth session of the UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution in Busan on Monday [Anthony Wallace/AFP]
‘You can’t recycle your way out of this problem’
The Pacific island nation of Micronesia is helping to lead an initiative, called the Bridge to Busan, that recognises that the “full lifecycle of plastics includes the production of primary plastic polymers”.
Island nations, l …
