The core dividing line between countries has remained the same throughout: whether the treaty should tackle plastics at source \u2013 by reducing production \u2013 or focus on managing the pollution that comes from it.<\/p>\n
The largest oil-producing nations view plastics, which are made using fossil fuels, as a vital part of their future economies, particularly as the world begins to move away from petrol and diesel towards electric cars.<\/p>\n
The group, which includes Saudi Arabia and Russia, argue that better waste collection and recycling infrastructure is the best way of solving the problem, a view shared by many of the producers themselves.<\/p>\n
“Plastics are fundamental for modern life – they go in everything,” said Ross Eisenberg, president of America’s Plastic Makers, a trade association for the plastic production industry in the United States.<\/p>\n
“Focusing on ending plastic pollution should be the priority here, not ending plastic production,” he added, warning that attempts to substitute plastics with other materials could lead to “unintended consequences”.<\/p>\n
But many researchers warn that this approach is fundamentally flawed. Global recycling rates are estimated at only about 10%, with limits on how far that can rise.<\/p>\n
“Even if we manage to boost that over the next few decades to 15, 20, 30%, it would remain a substantial amount that is polluting the environment and damaging human health,” said Dr Costas Velis, associate professor in Waste and Resource Engineering at Imperial College London.<\/p>\n
“Therefore, we do need to improve recycling\u2026 but we cannot really hope that this is going to solve all the aspects of plastic,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The core dividing line between countries has remained the same throughout: whether the treaty should tackle plastics at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-346342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115032411555871015","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}