Come August, negotiators will congregate in Geneva for yet another round of talks on hammering out a Global Plastics Treaty, under the aegis of the United Nations Environment Programme. They will pick up the thread from the failed negotiations at Busan in December 2024.
An agreement on tackling the plastics problem is delayed by differences over the approach to be taken — limiting the production and use of plastics or recycling it. (India is not in favour of legally binding limits or caps on the production of plastic polymers.)
The plastics problem is fast getting out of hand because it is hard to rein in an industry that is approaching a trillion dollars in size and produces about half a billion tonnes a year, even as the products have become so integral to daily life that they appear to be near irreplaceable. Yet, these polymers are also a growing problem because they pop up almost everywhere, including places where they pose a grave threat — such as human blood and semen, oceans and foods.
