Plastics treaty at risk: Countries urged to invoke their right to vote

NZ delegates have wrapped up the fifth round of international plastics treaty negotiations, in Geneva Switzerland. While the aim was to agree to a treaty by the end of this round of negotiations, a treaty was not adopted. Member states expressed their desire to continue the process, and so the Committee agreed to resume negotiations at a future date to be announced. Our delegates advocated for a treaty grounded in waste hierarchy principles, including avoiding the generation of plastic waste in the first place. In March 2022, 193 nations UN member states endorsed a historic decision to negotiate the treaty. This led to the establishment of an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to guide the process. You can read more about the negotiations here: https://bit.ly/3HmKblT

INC-5.2 has failed to deliver a Global Plastics Treaty. But it's not over. What has become clear in Geneva is that consensus won't deliver a meaningful treaty. A handful of countries - most of them oil producing nations - guided by short-term financial interests and not by the health of their populations and the sustainability of their economies, have blocked the adoption of an ambitious treaty. 🚨 This is their playbook and it will not change.🚨 More than 100 countries - the VAST majority - sought to deliver a treaty that addresses the scale of the crisis. That this ambition can be derailed by a minority of powerful petrostates and lobbysits shows this process is broken, and a way forward requires major overhaul. Big Oil = Big Plastic.

The road to a Global Plastics Treaty reaches a critical juncture as INC 5.2 opens in Geneva. This final stage will determine not just the content of the treaty, but how decisions are made and who gets to influence them. Questions around rules of procedure and participation remain unresolved — and civil society continues to push for meaningful inclusion, transparency, and ambition. The Zero Waste Asia Newsroom is on the ground to provide timely updates and perspectives from those advocating for real solutions to the plastics crisis. Wait for the Newsroom on our Facebook: @gaiaasiapacific.

What do Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, the U.S., China, and Russia, have in common? "More than 100 countries pushed for limits on new plastic production, but influential petro‑states - such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, the U.S., China, and Russia" #plastictreaty #sustainability #plastic

📣 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆: 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸𝘀 𝗮𝗱𝗷𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹 UN-led negotiations for a global plastics treaty ended without agreement on 15 August, with talks adjourned and no date set for their resumption. The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) had met in Geneva to advance a legally binding instrument to tackle plastic pollution. Key negotiating points included production caps, chemicals of concern, financing and compliance. The talks followed a previous draft discussed in Busan, South Korea, in late 2024. Read the full article by Dafydd ab Iago: https://okt.to/VS2u0k #ArgusMedia #IlluminatingTheMarkets

📣 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆: 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸𝘀 𝗮𝗱𝗷𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹 UN-led negotiations for a global plastics treaty ended without agreement on 15 August, with talks adjourned and no date set for their resumption. The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) had met in Geneva to advance a legally binding instrument to tackle plastic pollution. Key negotiating points included production caps, chemicals of concern, financing and compliance. The talks followed a previous draft discussed in Busan, South Korea, in late 2024. Read the full article by Dafydd ab Iago: https://okt.to/x5Y6jC #ArgusMedia #IlluminatingTheMarkets

📣 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆: 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸𝘀 𝗮𝗱𝗷𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹 UN-led negotiations for a global plastics treaty ended without agreement on 15 August, with talks adjourned and no date set for their resumption. The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) had met in Geneva to advance a legally binding instrument to tackle plastic pollution. Key negotiating points included production caps, chemicals of concern, financing and compliance. The talks followed a previous draft discussed in Busan, South Korea, in late 2024. Read the full article by Dafydd ab Iago: https://okt.to/VLsZwb #ArgusMedia #IlluminatingTheMarkets

📣 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆: 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸𝘀 𝗮𝗱𝗷𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹 UN-led negotiations for a global plastics treaty ended without agreement on 15 August, with talks adjourned and no date set for their resumption. The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) had met in Geneva to advance a legally binding instrument to tackle plastic pollution. Key negotiating points included production caps, chemicals of concern, financing and compliance. The talks followed a previous draft discussed in Busan, South Korea, in late 2024. Read the full article by Dafydd ab Iago: https://okt.to/sU7dGQ #ArgusMedia #IlluminatingTheMarkets

Week 1 of the Global Plastic Treaty Talks... As the 1st week of the Global Plastics Treaty negotiations conclude in Geneva, once again, the oil companies' lobbyists dominate those attending this key meeting and outweigh the numbers attending from EU delegations Tensions have flared around key aspects of the proposed treaty, including calls for a production limit on plastics, managing harmful chemicals in plastics, and how the treaty’s implementation will be financed, with countries splitting into increasingly divergent camps. On the one hand, there is a cohort of more than 100 nations that say they want an ambitious treaty, including, among other things, global targets to reduce plastic production. On the other is a small group of oil and plastic-producing states, including Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran – the so-called “like-minded group” – that reject production limits and want the treaty to focus on downstream measures to tackle waste. Three days into negotiations, these separate camps seem to be further entrenched, with the United States appearing to side with the industry-friendly “like-minded group”. Last week, Greenpeace released a report showing that seven petrochemical majors – including Dow, ExxonMobil and Shell – have collectively increased their plastic production capacity by 1.4m tonnes since the start of the treaty-making process and have sent a combined total of 70 representatives to the talks. If the talks go according to schedule, an agreement should be reached by 14 August. More details at: https://lnkd.in/dX9NmZre

The benefits of circularity in plastic packaging are already being documented in more economic opportunities and inclusive job creation across the informal and formal sectors in Africa, yet negotiators at INC 5.2 left Geneva without agreement on a Global Plastics Treaty. In the context of South Africa, initiatives like WWF's macroeconomic modelling assessment of the economic growth and job creation potential in a circular economy for plastic packaging and the South African Plastics Pact are projecting and realising these benefits locally. The continued commitment of all stakeholders is needed to continue to enable the transition to circularity that designs people into circular value chains, and harmonises design standards to assist Africa to further unlock greater jobs and sustained economic development. We need bold action in ensuring mechanisms to phase out and ban chemicals of concern, as well as problematic plastic products. Systems and infrastructure to handle elements that will negatively impact human health and have little value in recycling are largely not present in Africa, these chemicals and products will have a disproportionately higher impact in our context than in more developed settings. Finally, we support ongoing work of the willing - the urgency is too great to allow a small group of countries to prevent the bold action that is needed to realise sustained economic value in our economies.