Summary
The world faces an unmanageable plastic waste crisis within a decade unless countries agree to significant production cuts, warned Norway’s Anne Beathe Tvinnereim ahead of critical UN treaty talks in South Korea.
Divisions persist between plastic-producing nations, like the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, and a coalition of 60+ countries advocating for reductions across plastics’ life cycle.
Plastic use and waste are projected to triple by 2060, threatening health, biodiversity, and the climate.
The talks aim to address single-use plastics, toxic chemicals, and global production limits, but consensus remains elusive.
Correct. The problem could be solved overnight if manufacturers were heavily fined for producing such excessive and unnecessary packaging in the first place. Instead however, here in the UK, it’s the “consumer” who is expected to act like a dancing monkey and sort out all the waste into different categories and dispense the stuff in one of the wheelie bins that keep getting delivered to my door (wheelie bins which are ironically made from plastic). Makes me want to smash up the wheelie bins and dump them in the plastic recycling wheelie bin.