Plastic pollution has become a global threat. In early 2022, the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA 5.2) in Nairobi, Kenya, adopted a historic resolution to develop the legally binding Global Plastics Treaty, with an intergovernmental negotiating committee set up to discuss details.
Major global plastic-producing countries, such as the United States and China, advocate adopting the approach of the Paris Climate Agreement, setting general directions and allowing each country to take corresponding measures according to its own national conditions, rather than using a global uniform standard as the norm. On the other hand, the more active parties in plastic reduction, such as the European Union and African countries, point out that in the past, due to the lack of consistent norms, plastic reduction could only rely on voluntary measures by various countries, resulting in ineffective results. What's more, the scale of plastic pollution is too large to be solved by the policies of a single country.
The above debate between the two factions reflects that even though all countries have reached a consensus on environmental protection and plastic reduction, there are still many difficulties for the "Treaty" to overcome before it is formally implemented. The United Nations, as an integrator of all parties, plays the most important role in promoting it. Only by properly using international forces to promote it can global plastic reduction projects make progress and enable all people to move on the right path.
Although the "Global Plastics Treaty" has encountered twists and turns in the negotiation process, the resolution of "the United Nations Environment Assembly adopting the formulation of the Global Plastics Treaty" has exerted a profound influence in the world. Large food companies such as Pepsi and Nestle have gradually replaced disposable plastics with recyclable packaging materials; investors from various countries have begun to regard corporate ESG performance as an important reference index when evaluating enterprises; traditional petrochemical industries have also actively invested in research and development to find possibilities for industrial transformation. All the above show that citizens of the earth attach importance to plastic pollution and have the determination to take practical actions in plastic reduction!
