GENEVA: Countries are nearing agreement to tighten controls on trade in plastic waste, which would make it harder for leading exporter the United States to ship unsorted plastic to emerging Asian economies for disposal, campaigners said on Tuesday.
Global public outrage has grown at marine pollution, sparking demands for more recycling and better waste management. Only 9 per cent of plastic is recycled, environmental groups say.
Germany, the United States and Japan each exported more than 1 billion kilos of plastic waste last year, UN figures show.
There is an estimated 100 million tonnes of plastic in the world’s seas, with 8 million tonnes added annually, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says.
Officials from 187 countries taking part in UNEP negotiations are considering legally-binding amendments to the Basel Convention on waste that would regulate trade in discarded plastic. The United States has not ratified the 30-year-old pact.
“The dynamics are relatively positive because we see an overwhelming majority of countries supporting tighter control on plastic waste trade,” David Azoulay of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) said at the Geneva talks that end on Friday.
“I have never seen an issue move so fast through the different hurdles than plastics. It is a combination of public pressure, and of the fact that plastic is an easy issue to picture, it is visual compared to most other environmental problems,” he said.
Under a proposal brought by Norway, and backed by Japan and several African countries, shipments of non-hazardous mixed or plastic waste that are not ready for recycling would be added to the list of substances requiring importers’ prior consent.
Any plastic that goes on this so-called Annex 2 could not be traded between parties and non-parties to the Basel treaty.
“That would prevent the US from sending — it would only allow the US to export plastic waste that is already sorted, cleaned and ready for recycling,” Azoulay said.
“Which is exactly the type of waste they don’t send around because it has value.” Though outside of the pact, the United States could ship plastic waste under bilateral deals if the equivalent of environmental standards under Basel are guaranteed, experts say. The US observer delegation couldn’t be reached for comment. — Reuters
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