As Efforts on a Global Treaty Stall, Cities and States Are on the Front Lines of the Battle Over Plastic Pollution – USA

As Efforts on a Global Treaty Stall, Cities and States Are on the Front Lines of the Battle Over Plastic Pollution – USA

Posted on January 16, 2025 by DrRossH in Plastic Recycling, Plastic Waste News

Environmental advocates working on plastics policy expect to be on offense and defense in 2025 while closely monitoring the Trump administration’s fossil fuel and deregulatory agenda.

Source: As Efforts on a Global Treaty Stall, Cities and States Are on the Front Lines of the Battle Over Plastic Pollution – Inside Climate News

U.N. officials have said plastics are part of a triple planetary threat of pollution, biodiversity loss and climate change. Plastics, nearly all of which are made by fossil fuels, are inexorably linked with climate change. Under a business-as-usual scenario, the plastics lifecycle could be responsible for as much as 19 percent of global greenhouse emissions by 2040, according to the U.N.

“We have tested the resilience of this planet to its limit,” said Jyoti Mathur-Filipp, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee Secretariat, the administrative body assisting with the talks, in written comments after the South Korea meeting concluded. “Now is the time for us to push our own limits and honour the trust placed in us. We have no choice but to succeed.”

Trump’s “America first” agenda, his support for the oil and gas industry that fuels plastic manufacturing and his disdain for the U.N. Paris climate agreement, give environmental advocates little hope that his administration will fight for a strong plastics treaty. 

Populist polticians will always wreck havoc on the country and its economy.  By definition that has to be the result.  It is ignorance to think otherwise.