With climate change, oil spills and beyond those, the Covid-19 pandemic being foremost among the major concerns confronting groups of countries and in some instances, the international community as a whole, it is altogether understandable that various other arguably no lesser global challenges tend to attract rather less attention, surfacing at junctures when some sufficiently suitably endorsed study brings the issue to international attention. Plastics pollution is one of those issues and whenever it surfaces it does so in a manner that provides an incremental awareness of its particular and immense relevance as a dimension of the wider debate on the environment. Truth be told, the available information makes a persuasive case for placing plastics pollution right up there with the biggest environmental offenders on the planet.
Not that the issue of plastics pollution does not benefit from its own fair share of international attention. On Monday, more than fifty United Nations member countries, mostly European nations, will gather in Nairobi to attempt to draft a blueprint for what is being described as ‘a global plastics treaty,’ a set of rules that bind countries to agree, for the first time, to reduce the amount of single-use plastics that are produced and used.
Single use plastics, (disposable plastics) are mostly plastic bags (shopping bags) that are commonly used once before being discarded. They include grocery bags, water bottles, food packaging and plastic takeaway cutlery. Manufactured from fossil fuel, single-use plastics generally make a considerable carbon footprint and in an overwhelming number of instances they are used once before they are discarded. Truth be told, their popular use across several sectors made them an environmental ‘threat’ that can no longer be brushed aside.
Prioritizing, as they do, convenience over durability and repeated use, single-use plastics have been tagged as the prime culprit behind what has come to be known as our “throw-away society.”
The problem is put into perspective when account is taken of the fact that of the more than 300 million-odd tons of plastics produced worldwide, annually, half of this is single-use plastics.
Plastics, it should be noted, do not fully decompose. They continually break down into progressively smaller pieces of micro-plastics which not only pose a huge risk to the environment but are also reportedly extremely difficult to clean up.
But the problem does not stop there. Not only is the refinement of plastics believed to emit more than 200 million metric tons of greenhouse gases annually, but landfills where thrown-out single-use plastics are sent, account for over 15% of methane emissions. Here, the point should also be made that the disposal of more plastics to landfills leads to increases in landfill size and these emissions, naturally, create their own environmental footprints.
Touted as possibly the most important likely environmental pact since the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the Nairobi deliberations seek to frame an Agreement that will, in the first instance, cause countries to sign on to a significant reduction in the production of single-use plastics. This has caught the attention of other sections of the international community, not least the oil and gas industry since it is from that industry that comes much of the material that goes into the manufacture of disposable plastics.
There has been a relatively low-intensity but, from all accounts, sustained lobby by oil and gas interests to cause the Nairobi forum not to arrive at what we are told is its objective. The stakes, from the perspective of both sides is high. The mostly European delegations expected to be in Nairobi next week will take with them the contention that the refinement of plastics emits an additional 184 to 213 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gases every year. In the ‘next corner’ there are the oil companies, including, reportedly, ExxonMobil and Repsol, which are believed to have plans to pump around US$400 billion into new petrochemical plants, seemingly wagering that demand for plastics will continue to grow in the period ahead.
As the two sides marshal their forces ahead of next week’s meeting it appears certain that the global debate on plastics and the environment will persist way beyond the Nairobi forum. Where it will lead is a question that is yet to be answered, though the outcomes of the forum could turn out to be a watershed juncture in the prolonged and highly contentious debate on plastics pollution.