WASHINGTON, DC (December 2, 2022) — After a week of negotiations among governments at the UN’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee’s (INC-1) first of five meetings, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and America’s plastic makers remain hopeful a global plastics agreement can drive progress towards eliminating plastic waste in the environment.
Most importantly, ACC remains committed in its support of an effective and implementable legally binding global agreement on plastics.
At INC-1, governments voiced a resounding desire to develop a bold agreement that leverages country-specific action plans to accelerate circularity and eliminate plastic waste. ACC and America’s plastic makers support the same approach and want to partner with governments to tackle each country’s unique challenges.
Throughout the meeting, it became apparent that America’s plastic makers’ 5 Actions for Sustainable Change contain the tenets that governments repeatedly stated should be in a national action plan (NAP). They are:
- Require specific recycled plastic amounts in packaging.
- Leverage technology and innovation to rapidly scale up circularity.
- Create national recycling standards.
- Conduct life-cycle assessments of materials to inform policy.
- Implement extended producer responsibility systems to help fund circularity.
“These five actions are a blueprint for the U.S. and other countries to adopt and tailor for their unique country-specific situations,” said Joshua Baca, vice president of plastics at ACC. “We continue to encourage U.S. lawmakers to pass legislation aligned with these five actions. This would serve the dual purpose of creating a more circular economy for plastics domestically, while sending a powerful signal to the globe that the U.S. is leaning forward with an ambitious model to address the challenge.”
ACC strongly cautioned governments against production caps on plastics as proposed by some groups. In order to combat climate change and sustain a growing global population, such a misguided approach would hinder progress towards a more sustainable, lower carbon future. Sustainable development relies on plastics for wind turbines, solar panels, lightweight electric vehicles, building insulation, clean water and preventing food waste. Additionally, production caps wouldn’t address plastics leakage for the 3 billion people that lack access to adequate waste management.
As plastic makers and others invest billions domestically and abroad to scale up a more circular economy, we want to maximize effectiveness by partnering with governments across the globe. Working together we can accelerate investments in waste management and infrastructure necessary to keep used plastic in global economies and out of the environment.
ACC congratulates the United Nations, U.S. delegation, and host country Uruguay for a productive meeting, moving the world closer toward eliminating plastic waste in the environment.
