Polluters push back against global plastics treaty
Real progress on plastic pollution would require action from every plastic-using nation (which leaves out no one). Unfortunately, not everyone is on board. The oil and gas companies that supply the components critical to plastic manufacturing are calling for more plastic production. And some countries beholden to the industry are resisting the treaty’s most important elements.
Interest groups have intimidated and harassed scientists who point out the consequences of plastic use, says Almroth. She reported one lobbyist who screamed in her face at a treaty meeting in April. (Of course, this opposition isn’t new: Soon after biological oceanographer Edward J. Carpenter published some of the first studies on plastic pollution in Science in 1972, plastics industry representatives reportedly came to his office at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to question him and his bosses.)
Industry interest in directing plastics policies has only gotten more intense since treaty negotiations began. Nearly 200 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists, from companies including ExxonMobil and Dow, descended on negotiations in April, a 37 percent increase from the number of lobbyists who attended the previous meeting, according to the nonprofit Center for International Environmental Law. Aware of the threat of these dynamics, scientist participants called for stricter rules around disclosing conflict of interest for attendees, lest they undermine the proceedings’ key goals.
Fossil fuel–rich countries with economies dependent on fossil fuels—like Iran, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, which call themselves the “Like-Minded Group” in memos about the treaty—have also tried to flip the script on discussions around reducing plastic production to one focused more on recycling. This strategy used by the pro-plastic crowd has been going on for decades too.
At the same time, the fossil fuel industry continues to obscure data on the difficulty of recycling plastics. A report published earlier this year by the Center for Climate Integrity, an environmental organization, details how the oil and plastics industry promoted the idea of plastics recycling for decades despite its infeasibility, both technologically and economically.
In fact, only 9 percent of plastic is recycled, leaving the rest to be dumped, landfilled, or incinerated. And the growing “chemical recycling” industry is working to sell policymakers at the state, federal, and international levels on its greenwashing scheme that only promotes toxic plastic incineration further.
Already, 710 million metric tons of plastic has accumulated in the environment, according to a study published in Science, “and that’s not slowing down,” says Farrelly. “It doesn’t matter how much recycling we do.”
