Critics are describing the Biden administration’s opening position in a United Nations effort to reach a global treaty or agreement to end plastic waste as vague and weak, despite its recognition of a need to end plastic pollution by 2040.

The proposal, for example, calls for individual national action plans as opposed to strong global mandates. 

It does not seek enforceable cuts in plastics manufacturing, even though reducing plastic production was a key recommendation of the landmark 2021 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report on the devastating impacts of plastic pollution.

The U.S. proposal touts the benefits of plastics and calls for improved management of plastic waste such as re-use, recycling and redesigning plastics, which are positions similar to recommendations from the chemical and plastics industries.

Made public earlier this month, the U.S. position contrasts sharply with submissions representing dozens of other countries that are part of a “high ambition” coalition including members of the European Union. Those differences reveal deep divisions among some of the 160 nations working to solve a problem the United Nations describes as a triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution. 

And with the second negotiation session scheduled for late spring in Paris, scientists, along with environmental organizations, are making a case that too much is at stake for a weak agreement to come out of U.N. negotiations launched last year amid a global recognition that the world is choking on so much plastic that it threatens its very habitability.

“The U.S. (proposal) is underwhelming, to say the least,” said Bethanie Carney Almroth, an ecotoxicology professor at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, and member of the interim steering committee of a new group, Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, which formed last year. She studies chemicals and particles in the environment, including the microplastics that have become ubiquitous throughout the world, and even in human feces and blood.

Among Almroth’s concerns, the U.S. proposal would rely on national action plans, much as the 2015 Paris agreement does for greenhouse gas emissions blamed for causing climate change.

Some critics argue that the Paris agreement relies too much on collective action without enough incentives or penalties to make sure countries meet their commitments. A U.N. report last year found that individual country pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions put the planet on a path to heat between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius, well beyond the Paris goal of 1.5 degrees, ensuring further climate chaos.

“If that’s where we are going (with plastics), that’s not going to solve any problems,” Almroth said of the plastics challenge. “This is a very international problem … from fossil fuels all the way through the production lines, all the way through our consumerism, all the way through waste, exports and transportation. If we don’t make a global tool to address that, we’re going to fail. And when I say fail, I mean, destroy the planet and make it unlivable for humans.”

State Department officials declined to comment, instead referring to a written statement made in December by Monica Medina, assistant secretary of state, following the first round of negotiations in Uruguay.

“The world is drowning in plastics,” Medina conceded. “This is a crisis for people and nature, and one that is only getting worse.”

But, she said, a “country-driven approach should strengthen ambition. And it should foster innovation over time. Let’s avoid the temptation to impose one-size-fits-all measures that drive down our ambition.”

‘High Ambition’ Coalition Raises the Bar

In all, the United Nations has collected more than 60 opening submissions from participating countries, and another 200 written comments from non-governmental organizations, including environmental and business groups, in advance of a second negotiation meeting to be held in Paris May 29 through June 2. Last March, at a United Nations Environmental Assembly meeting in Kenya, countries agreed to work toward achieving a global plastics agreement within two years.

Some of the countries’ opening proposals are strong and expansive. The European Union, for example, calls for global targets to reduce the production of plastics. The E.U. and other countries articulate their vision for phasing out risky chemical additives, such as endocrine disruptors like phthalates, which are used to make plastics pliable and are a threat to human health.

The 40-member High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution, led by Norway and Rwanda, offered a proposal that notes plastic consumption has quadrupled over the past 30 years and that plastic production would likely double over the next 20. Measures and targets for limiting plastic production will be needed to “reduce pressure on the environment globally,” they wrote.

“Each (country) should be required to take effective measures to reduce the production of primary plastics polymers to an agreed level to reach a common target,” the coalition recommended.

The coalition also wrote that curbing the manufacturing of plastics “will complement efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emission.”

That Norway, a fossil fuel-producing nation, endorses the concept of limiting plastic production is significant, said Vito Buonsante, an environmental lawyer and technical and policy advisor at the International Pollutants Elimination Network, or IPEN, whose submission argues that chemical production and plastic pollution threaten the stability of the global ecosystem.

“We shouldn’t forget that the main problem here is that there’s way too much plastic,” Buonsante said. “And if we don’t slow down the amount of plastic that is produced, that is going to be problematic.”

Because it has a lot of diplomatic weight to throw around, whatever the United States proposes gets a lot of attention.

“The U.S. has quite a footprint on this process,” said Jane Patton, campaign manager for plastics and petrochemicals for the Center for International Environmental Law, a group advocating for “globally mandatory provisions establishing control measures” and a treaty structure “covering all stages of the full lifecycle of plastics” from fossil fuel extraction to waste management, “with obligations and control measures” in each of the stages.

The U.S. is also a major global plastics producer and leads the world in the generation of plastic waste.

“Many of the most powerful corporate plastic producers are based in the United States and they have quite a significant sway over the U.S. government,” she said.

‘Circularity’ Sounds Good, But May Just Be Spin

The U.S. submission contains lofty language. For example, it says the Biden administration supports an objective “focused on the protection of human health and the environment from plastic pollution” and an agreement that includes “legally binding obligations,” such as creating and updating national action plans and national reporting, as well as other “commitments and voluntary approaches.”

The agreement, according to the U.S. delegation, should be designed to prevent and reduce the amount of plastic pollution entering the global environment and promote the sustainable production and consumption of plastic.

Countries would be obligated to show progress and submit new plans on a time schedule, say every five years, according to the U.S. proposal.

Fossil fuel or plastic-producing countries like the United States, China and Saudi Arabia, tended in their submissions to emphasize waste management and national planning.

“The control measures of the (agreement) should focus on managing the leakage of plastic waste to the environment,” China’s submission said.  “National action plans are essential for countries to develop national strategies based on their national circumstances to address plastic pollution domestically and contribute to the global efforts.”

The Saudi submission, echoing Medina’s December statement, said “there is no one size and no common standards that fit all as individual countries.”

The U.S. named extended producer responsibility programs as a potential solution. These programs can make producers responsible for offsetting the environmental impacts of their products and packaging. But the environmental group Beyond Plastics warns that unless they are designed correctly, they lack teeth and will fail.

Buonsante said he appreciated U.S. language around the need to protect public health in any global plastics agreement.

But the way the U.S. framed its proposal, “it doesn’t seem there would be any consequences if countries don’t meet their obligations, whatever they are, in their national action plans,” he said.

The U.S. and many countries, along with industry, rely heavily on the term “circularity” in their proposals. It’s become a buzzword adopted by industry, countries and even some environmental groups to suggest an economy or products based on reuse instead of continuing extraction of natural resources like fossil fuels to make plastics. But it can also be used for greenwashing, or marketing spin, to make something sound better for the environment than it really is.

“Circularity is something that is an aspiration,” Buonsante said. “But it doesn’t have any concrete or common understanding of what that means.”

With plastics, questions of circularity are particularly problematic, he said, because plastic products are made with thousands of chemical additives, many of them toxic, complicating and even contaminating recycling processes. IPEN published a report last year titled, “How plastics poison the circular economy,” calling for public policies to end the recycling of hazardous chemicals found in plastics.

“Circularity is incredibly dangerous” with plastics, “because of the safety and sustainability issues are not only not worked out, they are not acknowledged,” said Terry Collins, a professor of green chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University, and another member of the Scientists Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty. 

Collins said that there is “an avalanche of evidence” that some chemicals used in plastics disrupt endocrine systems in the human body.

These “disruptors are wrecking us,” he said, “but the government is simply unable to address this issue.”

Recycling Has Failed, But Business Groups Still Push it

In their submissions, business groups are urging that the agreement recognize the benefits of plastics and bolster recycling policies, even though recycling for most plastics has largely been a global failure. Globally, only 9 percent of plastic waste is successfully recycled, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group that represents developed nations.

The Plastics Industry Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for example, urged countries in their joint submission to avoid “arbitrary” bans and “advance policies that help create a circular economy, such as promoting widespread adoption of mechanical and advanced recycling technologies.”

Advanced recycling is a term often used to mean chemical recycling, where, ideally, technology such as pyrolysis or gasification would turn plastic waste into fuel or feedstocks for new plastics. But scientists and environmentalists who have studied the largely unproven technology say it is essentially another form of incineration that requires vast stores of energy, has questionable climate benefits and puts communities and the environment at further risk from toxic pollution.

A recent study by the National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado referenced research showing that, with pyrolysis and gasification, much of the waste plastic is lost in the process. In fact, the researchers found only 1 to 14 percent of the plastic sent through those processes is retained as plastic, which critics say makes it hard to describe those processes as recycling.

The Business Coalition for a Plastics Treaty, which includes companies such as Coca-Cola (named by a coalition of environmental groups as the “world’s top plastics polluter”), Pepsico, Unilever and Walmart, submitted comments that acknowledged “most plastics are not designed for a circular economy nor are they circulated in practice.” But the coalition insists that “the best available scientific analysis shows us that known circular economy solutions, if applied at scale, can reduce annual volumes of plastic pollution by at least 80 percent by 2040 compared to business-as-usual and achieve near-zero plastic pollution by 2060 globally.”

A Coca-Cola spokesman did not respond to questions posed by Inside Climate News.

The International Council of Chemical Associations offered a defense for chemical additives to plastics, while claiming there’s little evidence that microplastics are harmful. Plastics, the group wrote, are a solution to climate change because plastic food packaging keeps food fresher longer and limits food waste that contributes to climate change, and plastic makes cars lighter and more fuel efficient.

“We must recognize that plastics, and the chemical additives contained within, are a critical element to achieving the circular economy with the lowest carbon impact,” ICCA wrote.

Both the International Council of Chemical Associations and the American Chemistry Council did not respond to requests for comment.

Scientists Form a Plastics Truth Squad

As the process moves along, one of the challenges for delegates will be to navigate complicated and evolving science.

That is where the new scientists’ group, with more than 500 members, can play an important role, working with receptive national delegations, said  Almroth, the University of Gothenburg professor.

One way, she said, is to help people avoid confusion or miscommunication over terms like circularity. “I’m a bit cynical sometimes with how some bad actors can behave in these situations,” she said. But “there’s potential for people kidnapping terminology or purposefully misleading people.”

The stakes to people and the planet also need to be clear, she said.

“I can be accused of being hyperbolic,” Almroth acknowledged. But she said she’s been working with other scientists on what’s called the planetary boundaries framework, and they have found plastics along with other toxic chemicals are now way outside what they’d call a “safe operating space” for the Earth and its ecosystems.

It’s not, she said, that the “planet is going to die or cease to exist. We’re just saying that we’re moving into a new system that’s much more unpredictable and much more inhospitable for our species. And we do see that plastics are connected to a lot of the shifts that are happening on a planetary scale.

“There are also connections to plastics and human rights issues, to human health issues, to reproductive issues, and to child development,” she said. “So across the board, there are problems and they’re going to get worse.” 

Ahead of talks on a new plastics treaty, nations are split over whether to target reductions in the amount of plastic that is produced or just to try and stop it from polluting land and sea.

In their submissions to talks taking place in Paris in May, the majority of European and African countries push for cuts to the supply of plastic while the US and Saudi Arabia focus instead on tackling plastic pollution.

The European Union’s submission says: “While measures on the demand side are expected to indirectly impact the reduction of production levels, efforts and measures addressing supply are equally needed, to cope with increasing plastic waste generation.”

It suggested several options to cut plastic production, including global targets to cut a certain percentage by a given year or nations putting forward their own targets.

The UK calls for governments to adopt legally binding targets to “restrain” plastic production and consumption while the African group lists restraining plastic production and use as an objective.

A group of countries calling themselves the “high-ambition coalition” echo the EU’s suggestion of a global target to reduce production.

The US is not one of the members (light blue) of the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution (Photo credit: High Ambition Coalition/Screenshot)

Production taboo

But major oil and gas producers like the USA and Saudi Arabia did not call for cuts in plastic production.

They focus on tackling plastic pollution through recycling and waste disposal.

The US says the treaty should be “country-driven”, “flexible” and that its preamble could include “the beneficial role of plastic, including for human health and food safety”.

In its submission, China – the world’s largest plastic producer – said “a variety of economic and market tools could be adopted in an integrated manner to reduce production and use of plastic products”.

The coalition of small islands (Aosis), many of whom are particularly vulnerable to climate change, did not call for production cuts in their submission either.

UAE minister calls for “phase out” of oil and gas

Their legal adviser Bryce Rudyk told Climate Home that small islands’ focus was reducing the amount of plastic that ends up in the sea.

He said islands were concerned that reductions in plastic production “may actually increase the cost of the plastic that small islands would utilise”.

“We have to think of it as an environmental, economic, social, political trend,” he added. “Kind of like climate change, this is not just a wholly environmental problem”.

Campaigners enthused

Environmental campaigners praised the EU’s proposals. Andres Del Castillo from the Center for International Environmental Law told Climate Home it was a “strong step”. He added that “if the plastics treaty is to meaningfully address plastic pollution, it will be critical for more countries to adopt similar positions that address the early stages of the plastics life cycle”.

Christina Dixon, who follows plastics treaty talks for the Environmental Investigation Agency, said it sent “a clear signal that the EU member states are leaders who are not willing to play with a Paris-style agreement like some of the lower ambition countries have indicated in their submissions”.

But she warned that, as in climate talks, the question of who finances action on plastics is key.

“First step”: Reformers react to World Bank plan to free up climate spending

The EU must support a dedicated multilateral fund to finance action in developing countries, she said.

“It’s great to have targets but if there’s no money for implementation you’re setting up to fail”, she added.

Fossil fuel lifeline

As well as polluting land and sea, plastics are responsible for an estimated 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions through their lifecycle.

If plastics were a country, they would be the fourth biggest polluter after just China, the USA and India.

They are made from oil and gas, potentially offering a lifeline to the sector as climate action cuts demand for fossil fuels as a source of energy.

Dividing lines

At the last set of talks in Uruguay last year, nations were divided along similar lines.

A group calling itself the “high-ambition coalition” argued for a top-down treaty that binds all to certain measures while the US, Saudi Arabia and most of Asia wanted a bottom-up treaty like the Paris Agreement.

The European Union is facing attempts to weaken its power to vote on behalf of its member states in treaty negotiations.

Governments aim to set up a treaty by 2024 and begin holding annual Cop-style talks between treaty members after that.

Environmental advocates are celebrating in Laguna Beach — but it won’t be with balloons.

The hilly seaside city known for stunning ocean views and rolling bluffs is weighing a plan to ban the sale and public use of balloons to curtail the risk of devastating wildfires and eliminate a major source of trash floating near the community’s scenic shores.

The Laguna Beach City Council is expected to vote Tuesday on the proposal to ban in public the popular mainstay of birthday and graduation parties, whether inflated with helium or not. The move in the community of 23,000 people 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles comes as several California beach cities have limited balloons and the state enacted a law to regulate the types made of foil.

“This is the beginning,” said Chad Nelsen, chief executive of the nonprofit environmental organization Surfrider Foundation, adding that he sees momentum to weed out balloons that tangle with turtles and sea lions much like he did with the effort to phase out single-use plastic bags. “We’re chipping away at all these things we find and trying to clean up the ocean one item at a time.”

Environmental advocates are taking aim at balloons, arguing they’re a preventable cause of coastal pollution that threatens animals and seabirds. Balloon debris can tangle wildlife or be ingested by animals that mistake it for food, and more than 3,000 pieces of balloon litter were picked up on ocean beaches by volunteers in Virginia over a five-year period, according to the NOAA Office of Response and Restoration.

In California, fire officials have long warned against foil balloons that can tangle with power lines, causing a power outage and potential fire hazard. Southern California Edison, one of the state’s major utilities, reported more than 1,000 foil balloon-related power outages in 2017, affecting more than 1 million customers, according to a state legislative analysis.

But coastal advocates want legislation that addresses balloon litter in addition to fire risk. Coastal communities in Florida, Delaware and New York have adopted rules aimed at curtailing balloon pollution. Several in Southern California have taken similar steps. The city of Manhattan Beach has banned foil balloons on public property and the mass release of latex balloons, while two San Diego County beach cities have barred balloons filled with a gas lighter than air.

Officials in Laguna Beach, which has miles of pristine shoreline and hilltop neighborhoods at risk of wildfires, have long discussed the idea. Lawmakers held an initial, unanimous vote in January to phase out the public use of all balloons, with a second and final vote scheduled for Tuesday.

Balloons can still be used by residents at home, said Mayor Bob Whalen.

“Even the balloon advocates and balloon industry was not opposed to banning them on the beach,” Whalen said, adding that the city moved on the issue both to reduce the risk of fires and to protect marine life along the city’s roughly six miles (10 kilometers) of shoreline. “There is going to be some impact on the local distribution of balloons, but as I say, people will still find places to buy balloons.”

Treb Heining, who began selling balloons at Disneyland when he was 15 years old and now, more than 50 years later, works internationally in the balloon industry, said balloons bring happiness to the world.

“All my life, I’ve seen children thrilled – of all ages. You can still be a child at 90 years old,” he said.

Heining said Laguna Beach officials would not come to the table for a compromise. He suggested banning portable helium tanks for the public, barring balloon releases and prohibiting balloons on the beach, rather than an all-or-nothing approach.

“They’re doing anything they can to make balloons into this evil, horrible thing. And they’re not,” he said.

Those who support the move include environmental advocates, whale watching groups and a marine mammal organization, which reported seeing a sea lion die of starvation after trash, including balloon fragments, lodged in her digestive tract.

“Here is another opportunity to be bold and on the right side of an issue,” resident Mark Christy wrote in a letter to the council last month.

Cheryl McKinney, who owns a party supplies company, opposed the idea, saying it would wallop the state economically and that responsible business owners encourage patrons to add weights to balloons and properly dispose of them.

“We always refer our customers to this motto: ‘Don’t let go. Weight. Inflate. Enjoy.’” she wrote.

___

Associated Press writer Stefanie Dazio contributed to this report.

We don’t often think of plastics as having “fingerprints.” But they do. And, as we continue to find microparticles in unexpected places — from local anchovy and seabird guts to the deepest trenches of the ocean — identifying those fingerprints is increasingly important.

Scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and MBARI recently published an open-access library — a collection anyone can use for free — of the chemical fingerprints of microplastics and other particles that are commonly found in and around the ocean. Researchers can use the library to figure out what kind of plastics are entering the ocean, where they are coming from and what we can do to keep them out in the future.

Scientists estimate that more than 11 million tons of plastic are dumped into the world’s oceans every year — the equivalent of dumping a garbage truck full of plastic into the ocean every minute.

Those plastics get weathered and eroded down into microparticles the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen or nearly-invisible fibers. They are ingested by marine mammals, permanently entering the food chain. Study after study has confirmed that microplastics are a global problem. But to address it, scientists need to know which plastics are moving from land into water.

Collecting chemical ‘fingerprints’

“Identifying microplastics is actually not as easy as it sounds,” said Emily Miller, lead author of the study. “The most accessible tools scientists have — a microscope and our eyes — can be deceiving.”

The chemical fingerprinting technique, called “Raman spectroscopy,” is much more accurate.

It’s fairly straightforward — scientists isolate a piece of suspected microplastic from an animal gut or ocean water or sediment. They shoot a laser at it. The sample scatters the laser light in a characteristic way depending on how its molecules are arranged.

The microscope collects that scattered light and graphs it as a “spectrum.” It looks something like an ECG, with wavy lines and peaks at some points. And it’s unique to the material.

Chris French, the laboratory director at Eurofins S&N Labs and a study coauthor, said getting the spectrum, or the fingerprint, is the easy part. Figuring out what material the fingerprint belongs to is the challenge.

“You can take a spectrum but it’s practically meaningless unless you have a database to go back and do the fingerprint matching,” he said.

Researchers take a spectrum, compare it to libraries of the spectra of known materials and look for a match — just like a detective might compare a fingerprint from a crime scene to a database of human fingerprints.

The fingerprint tells you what the material is, which can point to a source.

“For example, polyethylene is commonly used in disposable water bottles, nylon is a common plastic used to make fishing line, and polyvinyl chloride is frequently used in agricultural irrigation,” said Miller. In some cases, a material could even be traced back to the company that made it.

But the libraries aren’t accessible to everyone.

“Nearly all spectra reference libraries are locked behind expensive paywalls,” said Miller.

Eurofins S&N Labs, a lab that specializes in identifying mystery particles, did the spectroscopy work for the study. S&N Labs has the equipment and the know-how, but even they have to pay for access to a paywalled spectral library. They pay almost $10,000 a year — a cost that gets passed down to their users.

S&N Labs has thousands of users across many industries. But they rarely see academic or marine debris researchers — probably because of the high costs. A single identification request can cost anywhere from $550 to $3,000. So if a researcher opens up a stranded marine animal and wants to know what all those plastic particles are inside, they have to be very selective about which particles they send in.

“It can be prohibitively expensive for research labs,” said French. “And, right now at least, research labs and universities are the only people who seem to be interested in characterizing” marine debris.

“Ocean plastic pollution is a global crisis and we need to remove the barriers so that researchers all over the world can help find solutions,” said Miller.

So the team created a library specific to marine debris that anyone can use. It’s only the second open-access Raman spectroscopy library to date.

What’s in the library?

To build the new library, the researchers tested samples with known identities: pristine plastics in new condition — things like coffee cup lids, electrical tape, pill bottles and styrofoam boxes — plus old, weathered things picked up from fishery environments and beaches — balloons, straws, bike innertubes, dock lines and a Lego tire.

Including the weathered polymers was an important advance for marine debris researchers. “You won’t find anything (in a commercial library) that has been sitting on the beach for three years,” said French.

Miller said when you’re looking at little microparticles collected from the environment they aren’t necessarily all plastic, so they also added biological things to the library — clam, crab and shrimp shells, purple sea urchin spines, kelp, and bone fragments from various marine species.

They scanned 79 materials in all. For each one, the team scanned the sample 100 times to produce 100 spectra, then averaged those scans together to get a single fingerprint. Then they added that fingerprint to the library for anyone to use.

The full library was published in Nature’s Scientific Data journal in December.

“It’s not a huge database that we helped create, but on the other hand, you won’t probably find more than 100 different types of polymers out on the beach,” said French. “I think for what its intended use is it’s a very comprehensive database.”

Matthew Savoca, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove who was not involved in the study, commented: “If we’re going to mitigate this issue we need to figure out what the main sources are.”

Savoca studies how organisms interact with their environments and the human impact on those environments. He recently published a study showing that whales off the coast of California coast eat up to 10 million pieces of microplastics a day.

Savoca said including weathered materials was the study’s big, important advance. “What you’d find in the environment are materials that are degraded and fragmented and weathered,” he said. “The open-access part is nice, but I would argue that the libraries that exist are not super realistic to what you’d find in the real world, and this is bringing us closer to what you’d find in the real world,” said Savoca.

The Monterey-based researchers plan to use the library to identify particles pulled from the deepest parts of the Monterey Bay. The ultimate goal: keeping plastic out of the ocean in the first place.

“Once we have these plastic identities, we can trace the source of the pollution, and finally we can begin to manage the pollution pathway that enters the ocean,” said Miller.

Some interventions and management strategies have already begun to work.

States with “container deposit legislation,” or “bottle bills,” have much smaller percentages of beverage containers in their marine debris, based on data from NOAA’s Marine Debris Program. In other words, regulating specific plastics does help to keep them out of the ocean.

Miller hopes that more labs will continue to create and add to open-source libraries like this one. As libraries grow, scientists will have to standardize things like data collection and processing protocols so that the spectra are comparable and useful.

“The microplastics research community is in the beginning phase of making this type of research accessible to all,” she said. “We are putting this open-source library out into the world for others to use, but it is only one step. We need other community members to continue to contribute spectral libraries.”

The field of studying microplastics in the environment only emerged over the last decade, but it’s growing at a very rapid rate. “The community is growing so quickly that more and more people are going to find this useful over the coming months and years,” said Savoca. “I think it’s great that people in Monterey Bay are doing this work because it’s a really great system to study this problem in.”