The Decibel - How do we solve our global plastic problem?

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

175 countries are in the midst of tense discussions around a UN treaty to reduce plastic pollution. The second-last negotiation session wrapped up in Ottawa last week, but there are still significant hurdles to getting it done, including disagreements about whether to include a production cap.Today, The Globe’s environment reporter Wendy Stueck joins to explain what this treaty could change, and how countries are thinking about how to balance our reliance on plastic with its effects on our environment.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

By this point, we all know that plastic pollution is a big problem. You've probably heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch floating around the ocean and seen plastic bottles and bags littering your own neighborhood. Countries around the world are trying to solve this problem with a UN treaty. The penultimate round of discussions wrapped up in Ottawa last week, but there are still a lot of hurdles to actually getting this done. Wendy Stuke is the Globe's environment reporter, and she's been following these treaty discussions. Today, Wendy explains what exactly this treaty could change, and how we can balance our reliance on plastic with the effects of its pollution.

I'm Mainika Ramanwelms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Wendy, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. We're going to talk about the treaty in a minute, but I think I'd like to just start with getting a scope of the issue, really. How common is plastic in our world today? I think when I started covering these talks, I was stunned at sort of how pervasive and big the problem is. And one thing I found out is that plastic hasn't actually been around that long. It was invented in 1907. There was a product called Bakelite and it came about

because billiard balls used to be made of wood or ivory and those were hard to make. Ivory, you know, people started thinking maybe that's not the best use for it. So they came up with these cellulose, very smooth billiard balls. But their properties meant that they had, if you hit them just the right way, they could explode. So it came about, there was this competition and this substance came about and that was its first use. And that was not that long ago in historical terms. That was only 1907. But then you get this product that's flexible, durable, can be molded into multiple different shapes. And so it takes the place of wood in construction, steel in cars. We start finding new uses for it and it just grows. And so financially, it's a very big market. And there's an outfit called Statista, which does some records.

And they estimate that the global plastics market in 2023 was $712 billion US. And you just think of your own life, like it's cosmetics, lawn furniture, automobiles, healthcare, food. You know, the properties of plastic have made it very popular and very essential for a lot of uses. But the flip side of that and why people are talking about this treaty is that a big chunk of the plastics produced are used only once. So that creates a waste issue. Yeah. Let's talk about this issue then, the issue of plastic pollution. Yeah. We know that this is a problem, but can you help me understand exactly how big of a problem it is? Well, the scale, I mean, and I looked up some

numbers here. I mean, back in the 70s, annual productions, that's around the world, all the plastics that were being produced. And there's multiple kinds of plastic. Annual production globally, around 50 tons a year, metric tons, right? Right now, on average, the world is producing 430 million tons a year. And these are UN figures and their estimates, but more than half of that is likely used for single use or short use plastics. So your water bottles, your packaging, your sandwich wrap, right? And the UN Environment Program says, you know, if we continue sort of business as usual, that 430 million tons is probably going to triple by 2060 if we keep doing what we're doing.

And globally, worldwide, the estimates are that less than 10% of all plastic that gets made is recycled in any given year. So that means that a lot winds up in oceans or ditches or hanging on tree branches or places that we don't want to see it. And where it's contributing to, you think, okay, it's litter, but it's also contributing to harms. Yeah, well, I mean, let me ask you a question about that. So, yeah, you said it ends up kind of in our environment then and even our own bodies, it sounds like. How does it actually impact us in this way? Well, I mean, the thing about plastics, and you think about this, maybe you have a plastic bag that's wound up in your backyard or a kid's toy that is 20 years old and it starts to chip. And so those

pieces are microplastics and nanoplastics and they can break down. They can get in our soil, in the water. These fragments, scientists have found them in fish, in birds, sea ice, up in the Arctic where you think, well, it's not going to be much up there. But in like Arctic zooplankton, the little tiny things at the bottom of the food chain, there's plastics there. And in, I think it was 2021 or 22, researchers for the first time found microplastics in human placenta. And coastal countries, coastal nations, also, you know, indigenous residents who may rely on things like fish and ocean plants for their sustenance. If those food sources become

contaminated by plastics, that's a big impact on them. So let's now talk about this treaty and the negotiations that have been going on, Wendy. What exactly is this treaty and what is the overall goal of it? This is a United Nations endeavor. And a couple of years ago in 22, the United Nations Environment Program had a conference and a couple of countries, Rwanda and Peru, put up a motion to let's deal with plastics. And so they passed that motion. And then they decided we this committee to set up a internationally binding treaty on plastic pollution and to do that by the end of this year

and they set up five meetings and these things are are, so we've had INC 1, 2, 3. We just had INC 4 in Ottawa. The fifth and final session is in Korea in November. So the pressure is really on to wade through some of the text that has been developed to come up with a treaty. And what the treaty wants to do is, okay, we've got this rising volume of plastic. We see an increasing host of harms. So how do we do it? We need a treaty. We need a treaty that will talk about volumes, harmful chemicals of concern, and waste management. What this treaty and the people involved in it are trying to talk about is is the life cycle of plastics so

there's upstream midstream and downstream and the downstream is the waste management stuff where does it end up your blue box the ocean but the upstream is like how and where is are these plastics made most plastics are made from oil or gas and a lot of them use chemicals. And also like other UN treaties to come up with ways, okay, if we have this plan, who's going to pay for it? How are we going to make it that work? And is there, what kind of mechanism will there be for developing countries to help perhaps to help carry the load for countries that are less able to pay for it. Yeah. Well, let me ask you about the who then here, Wendy. So we mentioned

Canada is participating here. Who else is participating in these talks? So there's a lot of people at these talks. There are 175 countries participating, and that's a majority of UN, which has 193 members. There's the delegates, of course, who are in the room and wrangling over the wording of the text. And then there's environmental groups, and there's civil society organizations, including scientists, there's Indigenous representatives, lobbyists. And one of the NGOs did a study that just sort of counted how many industry lobbyists were at these particular talks. And there's a lot. There were a few hundred. And they're there sort of, you know, the delegates from the countries are in the negotiations talking

about the text of the treaty. But on the sidelines and sort of in the meeting rooms and everyone tugging everyone's elbow, those lobbyists are also trying to get their voice and message across. And one of the big sticking points of this treaty seems to be around the idea of a production cap, so a cap on the plastic that you can produce, essentially. Can you help me understand, Wendy, why is this so controversial, I guess? Industry has expressed concerns that a cab, or at least a poorly designed one, could have unforeseen consequences. Right now, for example, we're trying to make our energy and construction systems a lot cleaner and more efficient. Well, that might mean plastic used in windmills or plumbing, construction, automotive, transportation. So industries like, let's be careful and let's have this life cycle circularity model. Maybe we can mandate higher recycled content, that sort of thing. But there are countries that

tend to be oil producers, and that's Iran, Russia, Cuba, and they have their sort of position is, let's talk about waste management and let's fix waste management, but they're less interested in talking about production cuts. But then you have the environmental groups and some scientific groups who are saying look at the volumes, look at you you have literal mountains of plastic waste in some countries. In Ethiopia a few years ago there was there have been landslides at these plastic waste dumps that have killed people. The size is so big. So the environmental groups and some civil society organizations are saying, we cannot have a treaty without production caps,

without getting a grip of how much of this stuff is produced in the first place. We'll be back in a minute. Wendy, as you mentioned, this treaty is meant to be global and legally binding. So what would that mean? Like, what makes it legally binding? People that I've talked to and described how this treaty could go have said that there's various ways that it could wind up. Low ambition would be voluntary targets and countries get to sort of carve their own path.

Medium ambition would be like, okay, we have some targets, but there's still not hard production limits. And a high ambition treaty would be we have strict targets and we have timelines for phasing out certain chemicals of concern, for example, and certain products. And I think what the treaty negotiators will be trying to do is to thread that needle and find an agreement that is legally binding, which means that people have to report and monitor and track what they're doing, but also not strict or onerous or punitive to the point where countries will just go, ah, we can't do this. And even our climate treaty, like the Paris Agreement, it is legally binding, but just parts of it are. And, you know, like under that treaty, Canada, for example, it's legally required to report its emissions and come up with every couple of years its NDCs, which I think are nationally determined contributions. But the target is not mandated. And that's why we've seen in a number

of years, our Commissioner for Sustainable Environment has scolded the federal government for setting these targets and missing them. Yeah, the Environment Commissioner released a report last year saying that we've actually never met our emission goals goals and we're not on track to meet our 2030 goals. Yeah. But a lot of people in talking about this prospective plastic treaty have said it's the most important global treaty since the Paris Agreement. But they've also compared it quite often to an earlier agreement called the Montreal Protocol, which is some people talk about as sort of being an ideal version of when a treaty works. So let's talk about that. There's been a lot of discussion in these treaty talks about the Montreal Protocol from 1987.

Wendy, can you help me understand what that protocol was and how it's connected? Yeah, well, people are bringing it up because the Montreal Protocol is an example of an international, legally binding agreement that worked. And I mean, back in 1987, some research emerged about thinning of the ozone layer. That's a big deal because the ozone layer is part of the atmosphere that basically protects humans and all other life on Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation. What they traced that problem to were chemicals that deplete the ozone layer. And these are things that are used in air conditioning and refrigeration and hairsprays. And parties agreed on a way to phase it out. And one of the things that makes the Montreal Protocol so interesting

is it's one of the rare universally ratified treaties. Can I ask, was it successful? Did it actually help the situation here? Yes. So since it was first signed, about 90 plus percent of those chemicals that were causing the problem have been phased out. And what people also

say is that we still have working refrigerators we still have our hair products we still have the things that those chemicals were doing and so there was there's an outfit out of leo university called the carbon containment lab that last year took a look at why that treaty worked and they came up with a few key elements that i think people will have in their minds as they're contemplating a plastics treaty and and one of them was it set firm limits okay here's the harmful substance by five years out we're going to phase that out had that in the treaty and then it had enforceability. We were talking about this before. In the treaty, there were mechanisms that included fines and provisions for penalties. But what this

group found in their analysis is that those provisions were very seldom used because what happened instead is if the annual or routine results came up that, okay, this country is struggling and hasn't met that target, they would go, okay, what's happening? Why haven't you been able to make that target? How can we help? So there was sort of a more constructive way to get people to make their targets. And then there was this phrase, common, but differentiated responsibilities. Basically what that means, one size doesn't fit all. So it's like, yeah, you developed country, Canada, US, Japan, perhaps, we're going to ask you to phase out those substances in five years and set an affirmed target. Less developed countries, poorer countries, are going to give

you 10 years. And in that lag time, we're hoping that the developed countries will develop substitutes that are cheaper that will help you meet your goals. Just in our last few minutes here, Wendy, let's talk about Canada directly here. Do we know how Canada fares in our own plastic pollution? Well, we've got a zero waste strategy, which was put up in 2018. And, you know, we've done some constructive things in terms of Canada launched the ocean plastics charter. And they've got a target of zero plastic waste. We must be far from that, though, I would imagine.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Ottawa, like the federal government says that Canadians throw away more than 3 million tons of plastic waste every year, and only 9% of that is recycled. Only 9% is recycled? Correct. Wow. And, you know, approaches vary from province to province, from city to city. Your blue box rules are different than mine.

You know, Canada also exports waste to plastic waste to other countries, including the United States. There's been some restrictions brought in on how much we're supposedly shipping to developing countries like Myanmar. You might remember a few years ago, there was a big scandal about there's some shipping containers we sent to the Philippines that were supposed to be filled with ink recyclables, but they were filled with garbage. We ended up having to take them back. So the federal government has said they're trying to do certain things on this. Just at the opening of INC4, they said that they would bring in a plastics registry. So that's something that would require companies to report how much plastic they're

producing and recyclers, for example, to report how much they're handling, how much gets thrown in a landfill. So the idea behind that is to get a better grip on how much is being produced. And Canada brought in a single-use plastic strategy. Part of that strategy is that they labeled certain single-use plastics as toxic under the Canadian Environment Protection Act. And just to remind people, Wendy, so the single-use plastic, the strategy, this was essentially a ban on single-use plastics, right? So grocery bags, plastic water bottles, that kind of thing. Straws, that's the things that people take aid on.

But yes, in any case, Ottawa decided to introduce a provision that they're going to list some plastics as toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Some producers challenged that. And the federal court in 2023 said, Ottawa, you were wrong. Like that listing was an overreach. Yeah. In order to ban the substance at the federal level, the government basically labeled plastic as toxic, but the judge said that was, okay, I'll give you that stay because I do agree it could be confusing, but we need to hear this fast.

So the judge said that they wanted to hear that by June of this year. So the discussions around this treaty finished up in Ottawa at the end of April. So what happens now? You mentioned we're looking ahead to a fifth meeting later this year. What goes happens now? You mentioned we're looking ahead to a fifth meeting later this year. What goes on now? Well, one of the wins, if you can call it that, that came out of the INC4 in Ottawa was an agreement to hold intersessional talks. And these are talks that the countries continue between those big negotiating sessions to hopefully continue to trim down language, to work on contentious issues. But a lot of the civil society organizations and environmental groups were

disappointed that there wasn't a stronger focus by the end of INC4 to say, we're going to talk for the final session about a target of reducing plastic production by X. Now, there's still a possibility that that kind of language could be in the text, but it's not. They're going into these intersessional talks, what the target is. And people were complaining that, you know, basically Canada and others rolled over in the wake of the petroleum industry and others who were pushing back against that cap so tons of stuff to think about and i think people will be trying to work on the language and some people will be pushing for that low ambition treaty of like let's focus on waste management and have voluntary measures and everything will be

cool. And others will be pushing for that middle or even higher ground. And we'll see them come back to final negotiations then in November in South Korea. Correct. Wendy, thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for talking to me about plastics and use a recyclable cup. And water bottle. Yes, indeed. That's it for today.

I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms. Zura Jabril joins us as a fellow of Carleton University's Brooke Forbes Award. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.