A garbage truck full of plastic waste that ends up in the oceans every minute. Or take the 350 million tons of plastic waste, equivalent to the weight of 350 million cars, produced annually on a global scale. Such imaginative and shocking images serve as a reminder to wake people up about the scope and seriousness of the plastic dilemma.
Because if we continue as a civilization as we did in the past century, the United Nations Environment Program predicts, we will reach the staggering number of more than a billion tons of plastic per year by 2060. As cheap and useful as a material, plastic is devastating the planet. And that is why action must be taken, according to the consensus at the political level. That is why a United Nations committee has been meeting in Paris since Monday to work on a treaty that should put an end to global plastic pollution.
But the question remains whether this unanimity will lead to concrete action. More than 2,000 delegates from 175 countries participating in the negotiations hope to reach a first international treaty to reduce plastic pollution. This week’s talks are the second of five rounds that should lead to a final agreement by the end of 2024.