Businesses call for a global treaty on plastic pollution: how businesses can be involved in addressing plastic pollution
As the world calls for a treaty on plastic pollution, governments must involve businesses, to understand their particular priorities, challenges, and opportunities. Companies around the world have made commitments calling on governments to support creation of the proposed plastics treaty.
Reimagining a future with a plastics treaty in place, the economic, social, and environmental status quo would be different: one that calls for circularity.
In 2015, the global plastics market accounted for approximately 300 million metric tonnes, yet today less than 2% of plastic packaging produced by some of the largest plastics industry companies in the world, is reusable.
In an imagined future with a plastics treaty in place, businesses, like those in the global petrochemical industry, would need to rethink their operations. This would have a significant cost, as well as overwhelming benefit. From impacts on the companies themselves, to the implications to the global economy. From how we envision relationships between humans in societies, to how we structure interactions between humans and the environment, and to how elements in the environment interact among themselves in different ecosystems.
One example is on alternatives to plastics. As consumers call for elimination of plastic packaging, producers of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) packaging, including PET bottles used for mineral water, carbonated drinks, beer, dairy products, and vegetable oils, are grappling with insufficient infrastructure to collect, sort, and recycle the plastic waste. In some countries, there are efficient systems where PET bottles can be collected, sorted, and recycled. In other countries, PET bottles are mixed with other waste, and disposed of in a way that makes it difficult to sort, clean, and recycle them.
Businesses have contributed in various ways to providing solutions to the plastic waste crisis.
At a global level, businesses which make up 20% of the plastic packaging industry have committed to a common vision for a circular economy for plastics, led by the @Ellen McArthur Foundation and @UNEP. In South-East Asia, where only 18 – 28% of recyclable plastic is recovered and recycled, the informal sector provides the infrastructure for PET recycling, contributing 97% of PET collected for recycling in 9 cities – there are still opportunities for further action, as PET collected for recycling amounts to 26% at national level, and 54% at city level. ?In Kenya, manufacturers through the Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM), have taken steps to promote recycling of single use plastics. The Kenya PET Recycling Company (PETCO), is a joint effort by some companies in the PET plastic industry in Kenya to self-regulate post-consumer polyethylene terephthalate (PET) recycling.
Companies are increasingly called on to rethink aspects such as design of products, which makes them more suitable for reuse, opposed to single-use which presupposes disposal at first-use instance. For example, Coca-Cola’s World Without Waste vision: Design; Collect; and Partner, has as one aspect to have bottles designed in a way that makes it easy to recycle, and where the bottles are made partly out of recycled material. In Kenya, @Nzambi Matee, founder of Gjenge Makers, is turning plastic trash into cash: converting plastic waste into building products. This innovative solution to plastic pollution, which won Nzambi the Young Champion of the Earth 2020 Africa award, contributes to addressing the problem of plastic waste released into the environment. In Kenya, only 27% of plastic waste is collected, of which, only 8% is recycled and the rest is disposed into the environment.
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As the world now considers starting a process to agree on how to deal with plastic pollution at a global level, some lessons can be learnt from previous processes. How can businesses be involved?
The most recent global treaty on environmental law, is the Minamata Convention on Mercury. From 2009 when world leaders decided to prepare a treaty on mercury, until conclusion of the treaty, there were various issues considered. One was on the impact of the treaty on the supply of mercury, and what to do with the excess mercury on the market because its use has been eliminated in various business processes. Prior to this, and carrying on to date, there are various initiatives, voluntary and mandatory, to deal with mercury, at a national, regional level, and international level. From 2005, the UNEP Global Mercury Partnership, bringing together partners from governments, intergovernmental organisations, non-governmental organisations, industry, and academic, played and continues to play, a big part in global action on mercury.
The Minamata convention on mercury allows countries which have significant artisanal and small-scale gold mining to develop national action plans, on how to reduce the use of mercury. In preparing and implementing these plans, the country should carry out consultations with miners and mining communities. This is important because when businesses and communities are involved, they can share the realities on the ground, and the plans can then be aligned with real life circumstances.
According to the UN Global Compact, businesses are called on to:
Businesses should take a precautionary approach to dealing with plastic pollution; undertake initiatives to promote circularity including on reducing, reusing, and recycling plastic waste; and develop as well as ensure diffusion of technology that promotes reduction of the amount of plastic that ends up in the environment.
When in doubt about the impact of production or use of certain categories of plastic, businesses are called upon to err on the side of caution: better not to introduce plastic into business processes that would end up in the oceans, than to produce it and work to remove it from the bodies of the fish that ingest them.
Granted, plastic permeates our lives, economies, and societies. A global approach to dealing with the issue is needed, opposed to piecemeal interventions. Businesses around the world must be involved – to create a common future to fulfil the vision of #noplasticpollution.?