The UN issues draft resolution calling for an international legally binging instrument
A March 2022 draft resolution calls for an end to plastic pollution
Entitled "End plastic pollution: Towards an international legally binding instrument", the resolution passed by the United Nations Environment Assembly of the United Nations Environment Programme "notes with concern that the high and rapidly increasing levels of plastic pollution represent a serious environmental problem at a global scale, negatively impacting the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development", "Recognizes that plastic pollution includes microplastics, further notes with concern the specific impacts of plastic pollution on the marine environment, further notes that plastic pollution, in marine and other environments, can be of a trans-boundary nature and needs to be tackled, together with its impacts through a full lifecycle approach taking into account national circumstances and capabilities".
Global coordination and implementation of crucial actions to end plastic pollution may well face deadly headwinds
The paradox of clean energy: against a background of rising renewable energy production, to be further buoyed by the European Green Deal and the soon-to-be-signed US Clean Energy for America Act, all the while biofuel mandates remain firmly in place, the IEA has predicted that declining demand for fossil fuels for transportation will perversely feed global demand into petrochemicals, and in particular plastic products. Indeed petrochemical companies faced with declining sales of refined products such as gasoline are predicted to use the extracted feedstock to make more end products such as plastics.
Who ever said that ending our addiction to plastics would be straightforward?
It seems increasingly certain that the joint effort by concerned nations and supranational bodies - among other - to stop mountains of plastics ending in rivers, the oceans, soils and in animals' digestive systems will be as monumental as it will be multidimensional. It starts with big changes in consumer behaviour and individual responsibility.
Keywords: microplastics, sustainable development, marine environment, end plastic pollution, clean energy, renewable energy, European Green Deal, Clean Energy for America Act, biofuel mandates, IEA, fossil fuels, feedstock, transportation, petrochemicals, gasoline, plastic products, global, UN, United Nations Environment Assembly