Plastic pollution: Treaty talks get into nitty-gritty

Plastic pollution: Treaty talks get into nitty-gritty

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday warned that global plastics pollution was a “time bomb”, as diplomats began five days of talks in Paris to make progress on a treaty to end plastic waste. Representatives of 175 nations with divergent ambitions met at the UNESCO headquarters with the aim of making progress towards reaching, by next year, a historic agreement covering the entire plastics life cycle.

As the talks opened, the head of the negotiations Gustavo Meza-Cuadra Velazquez said the challenge was “immense, as we are all aware here, but it is not insurmountable.” “The world’s eyes are on us,” he said. Macron urged participating nations to put an end to today’s “globalised and unsustainable” production model, where richer countries export plastic waste to poorer ones. “Plastic pollution is a time-bomb and at the same time already a scourge today,” he said in a video message, adding that the fossil-fuel based material posed a risk to global warming goals, as well as biodiversity and human health.

He added that the first priorities of the negotiations should be to reduce production of plastics and to ban “as soon as possible” the most polluting products like single use plastics. The stakes are high,