A Global Plastics Treaty Is Coming. Everything About It Is TBD
Ideas shared by negotiators include banning toxic substances in plastics and enforcing a major reduction in production and usage.
A pedestrian walks along a bridge over a gutter, blocked by plastic waste and garbage, in Accra, Ghana.
Photographer: Nipah Dennis/BloombergA week of United Nations negotiations over a treaty to end global plastic pollution closed on Friday with many ideas and few decisions, as participants begin the work needed to produce the first legally binding treaty on the issue by the end of 2024.
The meeting in the coastal city of Punta del Este, Uruguay was the first of a number of planned sessions that include 160 countries. Opening the negotiations, Peruvian chair Gustavo Meza-Cuadra said the eventual agreement would be “the most significant international environmental treaty of recent years.” In a tweet on the final day of the meeting, UN Secretary General António Guterres called plastics “fossil fuels in another form.”