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00:00 And this Monday we're marking World Environment Day with the focus being on plastic pollution.
00:04 Now on Friday, global negotiators agreed to craft an initial draft treaty to end plastic pollution,
00:12 a preliminary but crucial step towards tackling one of the lasting sources of human waste.
00:18 Environmental activists cautiously welcoming the outcome of the five days of talks here in Paris
00:24 on plastic pollution, but they also express concern that the petroleum industry and some
00:29 governments will try and water down the eventual agreement. Most plastic of course being made from
00:36 fossil fuels. Joining me here in the studio is our environmental editor Valerie de Kimp.
00:41 Valerie, last week negotiators, as I just said, were meeting here in Paris to sort of
00:47 come up with a sort of international treaty on plastic pollution. Now today you've got diplomats
00:53 in Bonn to lay the groundwork for the upcoming UN climate summit in the UAE, COP28. Clearly the
01:02 world is facing multiple challenges, so just give us a sense of what exactly is the big picture.
01:08 Well as you said Annette, this year's World Environment Day is on plastic pollution,
01:15 how the world can put an end to plastic pollution and really the numbers are quite
01:20 dizzying when we talk about plastic pollution. Every single year 460 million tons of plastic
01:27 produced per year. This number has doubled since the year 2000 and is set to triple by 2030. And
01:36 this was very much at the heart of those negotiations you just mentioned there with
01:41 you know the plastic treaty. But again now the World Environment Day also coinciding with the
01:47 beginning of very crucial negotiations in Bonn and Germany working ahead of COP28, the annual
01:55 UN climate summit in the UAE. And already this COP has emerged as one of the most controversial
02:03 UN climate summits we've ever had and for several reasons. But one of the key reasons being that the
02:10 UAE's national oil company, the CEO of that company has been designated as this year's COP28
02:18 president and so that raises obvious questions about potential conflicts of interest. And so
02:25 you have again we're talking about plastic pollution, we're talking about the climate
02:30 crisis. What's the big picture? Well these are not individual issues, they're not separate issues,
02:36 they're actually two sides of the same coin. And you actually mentioned it Annette, plastic is oil.
02:44 Every single plastic object that we have we need fossil fuels, we need oil in order to
02:50 manufacture those products. And so the essential, the key question that we need to be asking
02:54 ourselves and negotiators, countries are working towards that objective. How do we move away from
02:59 fossil fuels? How do we kick our addiction to fossil fuels? And it's not just a case of
03:04 recycling is it? It's a case of reducing the production of that plastic. And I'm going to
03:10 ask you, reporting on the impacts of plastic pollution has been a big part of your coverage
03:15 on the France 24's Environment Show down to earth. Is there any story in particular that stands out
03:22 for you? Well you know Annette, when we think of plastic pollution we usually picture plastic
03:29 bottles on a beach. But we recently worked on a lesser known form of plastic pollution and it's
03:37 nurdle pollution, plastic pellets. And they're tiny beads of plastic and they're found pretty
03:44 much everywhere in the world. 230,000 tons of these plastic pellets wash up inner oceans every
03:52 single year. And there's one hotspot for nurdle pollution in Europe. It's in Spain, in Tarragona
03:59 in the Mediterranean, off the Mediterranean coast in Spain. And we actually travelled there recently
04:05 to kind of understand why this form of pollution has gone undetected for so long. And we met with
04:10 scientists, with activists who told us about this issue. And I want to show you
04:16 a clip of our report, an activist that we interviewed.
04:19 Back to Valerie.
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05:32 You see those pictures, Annette, that's the result of industrial pollution. These plastic
05:39 pellets are the basic ingredient for all plastic products. For one ton of plastic produced,
05:47 you need about 50 million individual nurdle pellets. And so they're so small that they can
05:53 easily escape from factories, from trucks, from containers, and essentially enter waterways and
06:00 the ocean. And that's why it's so hard to actually control this problem. You might wonder, shouldn't
06:06 the industry care that they're actually wasting some of that plastic? Well, the problem is that
06:12 nurdles are essentially worthless. They cost about one euro per kilo. So there's no incentive for the
06:19 industry to actually find solutions and put in place initiatives in order to limit spills.
06:26 And there's also a basic problem that there's no legislation in Europe at the European level,
06:32 but also at the international level, to regulate the problem of nurdles. A number of NGOs are now
06:39 advocating for nurdles to be classified as dangerous, for them to be a dangerous product
06:45 when they're on boats, on trucks, on containers. And so far that has not happened. Ideally,
06:53 the industry would have to put in place packaging, very robust packaging for that not to happen.
07:00 But again, that has not happened. And really, just to finish, to me, what's really powerful
07:06 about the story is that we usually think, OK, plastic pollution, it's about you and I
07:11 throwing our bottles, our plastic bottles on the beach, and it's about educating people.
07:16 Well, yes, it is about educating people, but it's also about the industry, the responsibility of
07:21 the industry, and holding them accountable for the pollution that they have created.
07:26 Valerita Kim, thank you so much for that analysis.