How Can Countries Agree on Plastic Waste Reduction?

CGTN Europe

CGTN Europe spoke to Erin Simon, Vice President and Head of Plastic Waste and Business at the WWF.

Transcript

00:00Erin Simon is Vice President and Head of Plastic Waste and Business at the Worldwide Fund for Nature.

00:06She joins us now from Geneva. Hello, Erin.

00:09There's a clear sense of urgency that we've just heard.

00:11The sticking point last year, as I understand, was oil-producing countries who want a voluntary

00:16rather than a legally binding agreement on production and cleanup of plastic.

00:23How are you planning to win them over this time?

00:25Yeah, I think the challenge in these negotiations is that they were set up to come to complete consensus, right,

00:34to come up with an agreement on how the world would move forward against a shared threat.

00:40And the challenge there is that there's a lot of different agendas that each of these countries have

00:44and they're trying to protect.

00:46And so what we're hoping to see and what we've seen a lot more of between Busan, so INC5, and here in Geneva,

00:54is that member states, those countries have come together to really start trying to do a lot of the work

01:00in between those two sessions so that we had a chance, we have a hope,

01:05of getting over some of those major differences this week and next here in Geneva.

01:10How much of it is about money, about agreeing who will pay for cleaning up waste if this treaty is agreed?

01:17I think, in general, what we're talking about is not just cleaning up waste,

01:23but rebuilding our supply chains that produce and use and recover these plastics.

01:29And that transition from a linear, so that sort of take-make-waste economy,

01:34to a circular one where we get those materials back and use them again costs a lot of money.

01:39And so I think especially those low and medium economies are looking for a lot of help

01:44because they're those places, those communities where the waste is really showing up on their shorelines

01:51and they are the most disproportionately impacted.

01:54So it's going to be really important that we figure out how to finance it,

01:57but we also have to figure out how to make that system work.

02:00And those are some of the other key elements that are going to be really important

02:03that they come to agreement on this week.

02:05We have seen a number of countries banning plastic straws, single-use plastic shopping pads,

02:10microbeads in cosmetics and other initiatives.

02:13Are we at least starting to slow the rate of plastic pollution?

02:18We have not gotten to that yet.

02:21We are still accelerating.

02:22That's why these governments came together a few years ago in 2022 and said,

02:29this cannot be handled by individual country legislation,

02:33individual company actions, individual actions.

02:36We need to work together as a global community to solve this.

02:39And so to begin, they need to figure out what are those products we're all going to stop making

02:44because they are either problematic because they end up in nature

02:48and cause harm to local communities or to species

02:52or because they're not easy to recycle like straws in single-use plastic bags.

02:56You've spoken about the need for completely redesigning supply chain mechanisms,

03:01that we need to look at how these plastics are produced and put targets on things like that.

03:07Where's the leverage going to come from?

03:09I mean, clearly, no one's going to disagree that there's a plastic pollution problem.

03:14But how can you compel a country that's not that keen to be legally bound by this agreement?

03:20I think there's a lot of economic opportunity in building new supply chains

03:26with a lot of opportunities for innovation, right?

03:30Today, we are taking a material from the earth, so 90% of plastic comes from oil and gas,

03:36and we are only using about 5% of its value because we just take it

03:41and then we throw it away after just a moment of use.

03:44Imagine if we could recoup that value and use it again and again.

03:48There's just a huge opportunity that's on the table,

03:51and so our hope is that if we can help these countries to realize the economic opportunity

03:57along with the one to reduce plastic pollution as being the bridge that we can build

04:03to find agreement on how to move forward to get there.

04:06Well, Erin Simon, good luck for the next few days.

04:09I know the deadline is the 14th of August.

04:11Erin is the vice president, head of plastic waste and business at the Worldwide Fund.

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