A future that’s free of plastic

It’s a challenge as daunting as it is urgent, the equivalent in international relations of trying to hold a moonbeam in your hand.

It requires the commitment of 175 countries to bridge significant differences to create a future free of the plastic pollution that’s so harmful to people and everything in nature.

Negotiators from around the world, along with armies of lobbyists and observers, have been in Ottawa this week at the fourth of five planned rounds of negotiation aimed at establishing a treaty by the end of the year that would eliminate plastic waste by 2040.

It’s estimated that less than 10 per cent of the more than 350 tonnes of plastic thrown out each year are currently recycled, leaving the remainder to foul the land, seas and human and animal health by tainting what the world eats, drinks and breathes.

That speaks to the scale of the challenge and the scope of proposed remedies.

Given the ubiquity of plastics, success will take more than merely giving up plastic straws and shopping bags. As with most of humanity’s self-inflicted crises, it will require drastic changes to the way we live. It will demand not just more effective recycling but a complete rethink of how we use plastics in our lives. It will demand that we dramatically alter our consumption and consumer habits and end our throwaway culture.

Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said he was heartened by what he had been hearing as the UN International Negotiating Committee opened talks. “People don’t just want an agreement, they want an ambitious agreement,” he said. Some countries more than others, of course.

Canada is considered one of 64 “high ambition” countries for its commitment to reducing plastic production.

An agreement will be inadequate, Guilbeault said, if it doesn’t include limits on plastic production — a measure not favoured by plastic-producers and oil and gas exporters who prefer a narrower focus on reducing plastic waste and recycling.

This round of talks is aimed at streamlining an existing draft treaty, developed during the third round of talks in Kenya last fall, and deciding on its scope. It contains a large section with multiple options for addressing plastic production, particularly single-use or short-lived plastic products.

Organizations such as Greenpeace Canada have said they want to ensure production cuts stay on the table.

Guilbeault said he hoped about 70 per cent of the draft could be agreed to by the time talks in Ottawa end, with the thorniest issues left for the final negotiating session scheduled for November in South Korea. “We know there are difficulties,” he said. “But I am confident that we can find ways to build shared understandings and identify areas of convergence.”

Guilbeault said Canada will create a national registry — to be phased in over several years — to track plastic production and pollution, akin to how it tracks greenhouse-gas emissions. The registry will make plastic producers more responsible for what they put on the market, he said, and “ensure that there’s more transparency in Canada on the production and use of plastics.

“It is hard to tackle a problem if you don’t know what it is, where it is.”

The U.S. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory said in a recent report that plastics have shown the strongest production growth of all bulk materials over the last decade even as pollution has “become an increasing threat to natural ecosystems, human health and climate.”

Without change in its exponential growth trajectory, plastic production is forecast to double or triple by 2050, the report estimated.

How much change will be welcomed by a global industry valued at an estimated $522 billion is a question yet to be answered.

In all, it’s a horrifying prospect in a world where people are already appalled by reports of the nanoplastics they are consuming and by photographs of dead whales with stomachs full plastic garbage and sea turtles and other marine animals hamstrung in discarded plastic, of islands of plastic garbage adrift on oceans.

As with early talks on climate change and global strategies to curb greenhouse gases, the negotiations on plastics will require policymakers to think long-term and take corrective actions now. It’s in all our interests that these negotiations produce meaningful results.