Major US Policy Shift on Global Plastics Treaty

In a major policy shift ahead of the next round of negotiations on the global treaty on plastic pollution, the United States will support a reduction in the production of new plastics, reports Reuters, citing a source close to US negotiators. This aligns the United States with the European Union, Canada, and South Korea, among others, but puts it at loggerheads with Saudi Arabia and China.

The United Nations–led negotiations for a legally binding global treaty to prevent plastic pollution have been divisive, with industry representatives opposing caps on new plastics production while some countries and NGOs see it as an effective measure. The debate over this issue at the fourth meeting of the UN’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) in Ottawa in April of this year drove the negotiations into overtime, reports Reuters.

Reuters also states that the United States now supports the creation of a potential global list of chemicals of environmental concern and the drafting of global criteria “to identify what should be on a list of ‘avoidable plastic products’ to phase out."

The fifth and final round of INC negotiations are scheduled to begin in Busan, South Korea, on Nov. 25, 2024, after the US presidential elections. The election results, of course, could signal yet another shift in policy.

A betrayal of US manufacturing, says ACC

While environmental organizations and activists largely applauded the shift in policy, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) quickly put out a statement castigating the White House for its willingness to “betray US manufacturing and the hundreds of thousands of jobs it supports."

“As the White House caves to the wishes of extreme NGO groups, it does a disservice toward our mutual ambition for a cleaner, lower carbon future, where used plastic doesn’t become pollution in the first place,” said the ACC. “If the Biden-Harris administration wants to meet its sustainable development and climate change goals, the world will need to rely on plastic more, not less. Plastics enable solar and wind energy; are critical to modern healthcare; deliver clean drinking water; reduce home, building, and transportation energy needs; and help prevent food wastage,” said the ACC.

Plastics non grata in White House

The policy shift reported in an exclusive by Reuters follows the publication by the White House late last month of the hefty "Mobilizing Federal Action on Plastic Pollution: Progress, Principles, and Priorities." The document is described by the administration as the “first comprehensive, government-wide strategy to target plastic production, processing, use, and disposal.”

The White House previously had committed the federal government to eliminating single-use plastics from food service operations, events, and packaging by 2027 and from all federal operations by 2035.