Ambitious global treaty to end plastic pollution

Global businesses across the plastics value chain, financial institutions, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) gathered on September 21, 2022 to announce a common vision for an effective and ambitious Global Treaty to End Plastic Pollution. The vision will form the basis for future policy engagements with governments through a newly launched Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty which will be convened by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and WWF.

Building on previous efforts to raise the business voice in favor of starting intergovernmental negotiations, the organizations standing behind the vision see the global treaty as the single most important opportunity to accelerate progress towards a circular economy in which plastic never becomes waste or pollution, and the value of products and materials is retained in the economy. The treaty negotiation process, which is expected to conclude at the end of 2024, will largely determine the trajectory of the plastic pollution crisis for generations to come.  A Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty will push strongly for a framework that leaves the business-as-usual approach at the door and ushers us into a new era where ending plastic pollution is finally within reach.

Ahead of the first Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee (INC) meeting scheduled for the end of November this year, the endorsing organiations are calling out the need for a global treaty which sets common goals, rules and obligations that member states will be required to implement within their national jurisdictions. For businesses and investors, this means creating a level playing field and preventing a patchwork of disconnected solutions.

In a strong signal of their ambition for the negotiation process, the endorsing organizations agree that the treaty must support progress on a number of key outcomes including the reduction of plastic production and use through a circular economy approach, increased circulation of necessary plastic and the prevention and remediation of hard-to-abate micro- and macro-plastic leakage into the environment. The list of organizations endorsing the common vision highlights the high-level of agreement between businesses across the plastics value chain and supporting organizations on the need to define a comprehensive and coordinated set of upstream and downstream policy measures that help achieve desired global outcomes and are adaptable to local conditions.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation and WWF will convene organizations aligned with this vision to develop ambitious policy recommendations, engage with treaty negotiators, and build confidence in the business community on the benefits and necessity of an effective global plastics treaty.

On March 2, 2022, at the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, 175 UN member states unanimously adopted a resolution to start the negotiations of a new Global treaty to End Plastic Pollution.