France’s Macron urges end to plastic pollution at global talks

French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday warned that global plastics pollution was a “time bomb”, as diplomats began five days of talks in Paris to make progress on a treaty to end plastic waste.

Representatives of 175 nations with divergent ambitions met at the UNESCO headquarters with the aim of making progress towards reaching, by next year, a historic agreement covering the entire plastics life cycle.

As the talks opened, the head of the negotiations Gustavo Meza-cuadra Velazquez said the challenge was “immense, as we are all aware here, but it is not insurmountable”

“The world’s eyes are on us,” he said.

Macron urged participating nations to put an end to today’s “globalised and unsustainable” production model, where richer countries export plastic waste to poorer ones.

“Plastic pollution is a time-bomb and at the same time already a scourge today,” he said in a video message, adding that the fossilfuel based material posed a risk to global warming goals, as well as biodiversity and human health.

He added that the first priorities of the negotiations should be to reduce production of plastics and to ban “as soon as possible” the most polluting products like single use plastics.

The stakes are high, given that annual plastics production has more than doubled in 20 years to 460 million tonnes.

Two-thirds of this output is discarded after being used once or a few times, and winds up as waste. More than a fifth is dumped or burned illegally, and less than 10 per cent is recycled.

The head of the UN Environment Programme Inger Andersen told the delegates that a throwaway plastic culture was “gushing pollution galore, choking our ecosystems, warming the climate, damaging our health” and that the most vulnerable were the hardest hit.

“Only elimination, reduction of, a full lifecycle approach, transparency and a just transition, only those can bring success because the truth is that we cannot recycle our way out of this mess,” she told delegates to loud applause.

Many countries are reluctant to aim for absolute cuts in production, insisting that recycling and better waste management is the answer.

— Reuters A general view of the plenary room during the opening of the second session of negotiations around a future treaty on tackling plastic pollution at the Unesco Headquarters in Paris.