US Finally Agrees to Back Limits on Plastic Production. Here’s Why That Matters.

Plastic waste is pummeling the South Pacific, polluting coral reefs and lagoons, washing up in tons on sandy shores and accumulating in a giant mass in the ocean. Ocean currents put Pacific Island nations at the front lines of the global plastic pollution crisis, even though the islands’ 2.3 million inhabitants contribute less than 1.3 percent of the world’s plastic waste. In just five years, experts predict that up to 53 million tons of plastic pollution will impact the lives of Pacific Islanders annually.

In March 2022, the United Nations Environment Assembly agreed to begin negotiating a legally binding treaty between 175 countries that will determine how the world deals with such plastic pollution. The fifth and final negotiating session is now set to start in late November this year. Recognizing the scope and severity of the crisis, delegates for the 14 Pacific Island countries have been at the forefront of the international plastic treaty talks, advocating for strict limits on plastic production and the need to set tangible goals for waste management.

Other countries, including Rwanda, Peru and European Union nations, have also pushed for ambitious goals and plastic production caps. But the United States, alongside oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia and China, has historically opposed these proposals. The oil and gas industry wants delegates to carve out a treaty that focuses on things like plastic tracking and recycling rather than decreasing production — even though, for decades, plastics companies knew that recycling was an overwhelming failure.

But in August, in what could be a major breakthrough for the future of the planet, President Joe Biden’s administration indicated it would support plastic production limits and increased controls on the toxic chemicals that are used in the plastic production process.

Environmental groups praised the announcement, while industry groups like the American Chemistry Council — which has spent nearly $10 million in lobbying efforts so far this year — lambasted the administration for “caving” to environmentalists’ wishes and “betray[ing] U.S. manufacturing.”

While the Biden administration’s announcement gained little attention in a crowded news cycle, this shift in approach carries urgent importance. Less than 10 percent of plastic waste is currently recycled globally; the rest winds up dumped or incinerated, harming communities and polluting the Earth. If the years of negotiations yield a treaty that focuses on recycling — not production caps — as a solution to the crisis, then the world will be digging itself into an even deeper plastic pollution hole. And it would take a huge amount of additional international coordination to climb back out.

Plastic, which is derived from fossil fuels, is toxic throughout every stage of its life cycle, from production to disposal. The extraction and refinement of fossil fuels for plastic production emits hundreds of millions of metric tons of greenhouse gases each year, heating up the atmosphere and fueling the climate crisis. Research from the Center for International Environmental Law emphasized that the global plastics treaty needs “to incorporate ambitious obligations that specifically target global plastic production” if we are going to keep global warming below the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold.

Plastics also contain a slew of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals, which are released during production at facilities that, in the United States, are often placed in low-income communities and communities of color. In January, a report by Amnesty International found that the Houston Ship Channel — a major hub for fossil fuels in the United States — is a racial “sacrifice zone,” where an immense and disproportionate burden of pollution is placed on people of color by fossil fuel companies. The report noted that the scale of harmful pollution amounts to a human rights violation.

At the end of plastics’ life cycle, wealthy nations, including the United States and the United Kingdom, frequently export their waste to poorer nations in a phenomenon that has been dubbed “waste colonialism.” Often, these countries have fewer resources to manage and tame the vast amounts of trash than the rich countries that are sending it. The term was coined as far back as 1989, when several African nations expressed concerns at the United Nations Environmental Program Basel Convention that wealthy countries were using countries in Africa as dumping grounds for hazardous waste.

Nevertheless, plastics and discarded electronic devices, known as e-waste, are increasingly piling up in toxic landfills across the Global South. In Kenya, waste pickers earn a living by scavenging these e-waste dumps for metal scraps, a hazardous process that leaves them vulnerable to infections, cancer and lung diseases. According to the UN Environmental Assembly, it is waste pickers like these — people in poverty lacking health or labor protections — who are responsible for recycling 60 percent of the world’s plastic waste.

After China banned plastic imports in 2018, waste streams began flowing to Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam — though these countries have announced plans to ban imports in the near future too, diverting it to places like Myanmar. An investigation by Lighthouse Reports released in January found that low-income communities in Myanmar are suffering from the influx of plastic, which is shipped from countries including the United States, Canada and Germany.

“There is no making this better; there is no responsible plastic waste export,” Jan Dell, a plastic waste expert and independent chemical engineer, told Lighthouse Reports.

It is clear that 1989, or sooner, was the best time to enact ambitious, meaningful plastic production caps. The second-best time is today. The United States has taken a major step forward in this goal, and by breaking from its previous stance, the U.S. can hopefully pressure other powerful countries to do the same. Still, it is unclear what the outcome of the talks will be in December, or whether the Biden administration will make good on its word. Meanwhile, as UN delegates have convened to hammer out the global agreement, plastic production has continued to increase. It’s now at 460 million tons per year — an exorbitant amount of waste that will overwhelmingly impact communities in the Global South, who have spent years trying to stymie the flow.