Category: Environment EN

A Recap of Day 2 Talks Check out the recap of the 2nd day of the #INC2 negotiations of the #PlasticsTreaty.  

A first-ever study reveals the hard truths behind soft drinks' plastic bottles: The beverage industry supply chain of this common plastic, known as polyethylene terephthalate or PET, is riddled with carcinogens, emissions and contamination. Worldwide, the beverage industry buys more than 500 billion plastic bottles annually – nearly a million per minute. Making PET requires hundreds of...

Beat Plastic Pollution is the theme for this year’s World Environment Day.  The data put out by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) is staggering. Around the world, one million plastic bottles are purchased every minute, while up to five trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year. Plastic production keeps growing, with half of all plastic produced designed for...

Lydia Chai, a Malaysian lawyer based in Auckland, has been campaigning for New Zealand to stop sending plastic waste to Malaysia and other developing countries. Her campaign garnered a lot of media interest, including comments by then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. 11,500 people signed Chai’s petition. On Thursday 8 June 2023 at 6:40am Malaysian time, Chai will be facing off against industry...

Insights on the First Day Talks The first day of the Plastics Treaty Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-2) has come to an end with a mix of highs and lows. Here are some observations of the first day talks made by Break Free From Plastic (see images). PREVIOUSLY: The UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which is hosting the talks, released a blueprint for reducing plastic waste by 80% by...

Reject False Solutions & Ineffective Techno-Fixes For the Global #PlasticsTreaty to be effective, the treaty must include legally binding, time-bound, and ambitious targets to scale up reuse, refill, and alternative product delivery systems to accelerate the transition away from single-use plastics. Correspondingly, the treaty must reject false solutions, regrettable substitutes, and...

A Brief Recap of Previous Negotiations The second session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-2) for Plastics will take place in Paris, France, from 29 May to 2 June 2023. This United Nations committee will in Paris to work on what is intended to be a landmark treaty to bring an end to global plastic pollution. The Committee is charged with developing the first international,...

Research just published by the US Environment Protection Agency has found that recycled paper and construction materials “contained greater numbers of chemicals than virgin products”. Some 733 identified chemicals, including flame retardants, solvents and dyes, “had greater occurrence in recycled compared to virgin materials”. The authors of the paper, published in Environmental Science...