UN meeting spotlights global plastic pollution treaty
The UN Environment Assembly in Kenya's capital could mandate an intergovernmental negotiating committee to broker an agreement that would require all countries to adopt national targets and plans to eliminate plastic spills, particularly to reduce plastic leakage into the ocean, and to recycle and manage it.
The amount of plastic in the ocean is incomprehensible – there are as many as 51 trillion pieces of plastic in surface water alone. Ocean plastic pollution harms animals, which ingest it, and the risks to humans of consuming seafood contaminated with it remain unknown.
Most plastic entering the ocean comes from rivers: One report found that up to 95 percent of plastic comes from just 10 river systems, eight of which are in Asia. Much of this originates in developed countries, who have exported it to developing countries for recycling or disposal.
In addition to the massive piles of floating plastic, such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch three times the size of France, scientists are also concerned about microplastics smaller than 5 millimeters, which can be found everywhere from the far-flung Antarctic to the deepest ocean trenches.
Plastic pollution isn’t limited to water either, it’s found in every corner of the planet, from the Arctic to Mount Everest. Furthermore, plastic production is a major driver of climate change. If the entire plastic life cycle were a country, it would be the fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
While technological solutions to clean up plastic waste have proven successful, and attempts to limit the use of single-use plastics are welcome, the challenge remains to limit the production of the material in the first place. This can only be achieved with a global agreement.
