(5 April 2022) – Pacific
The Global Commitment provides a voluntary framework for stakeholders to develop and report on actions and progress related to plastic pollution. This ISLANDS webinar was convened in cooperation with UNEP and IUCN. By outlining the primary objectives of the Global Commitment, the webinar invited ISLANDS Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) to become signatories of the Global Commitment and take away crucial insights obtained by other signatories. The session also featured IUCN projects that explore effective and quantifiable solutions to tackle plastic pollution, especially within the SIDS context.
Overall, this ISLANDS webinar facilitated knowledge exchange by highlighting the existing solutions to Turn the Tide on plastics in SIDS. It also showcased how ISLANDS can facilitate SIDS-to-SIDS learning through the Green Forum. The event showcased the Plastics Community of Practice on the Green Forum – a new collaborative space for stakeholders in the green economy.
Watch the webinar recording here.
Discussion moderated by Alison Watson, Life Cycle Initiative, UNEP
Melanie Ashton, CCKM Project, ISLANDS Programme opened the webinar by underlining the links between persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and plastics. She noted that plastics and POPs pose risks to human health at every stage of their respective lifecycles. In the manufacture of plastics, various chemical additives are included to improve their quality, despite potentially negative health and environmental effects.
Ashton provided examples of POPs found in plastics, including polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) which are a group of brominated flame retardants used in polyurethane foam for car and furniture upholstery, as well as plastic casings for electronics. She also noted that short-chain chlorinated paraffins (SCCPs) are industrial softeners in plastics. They have been recently found in PVC baby bibs and other plastic products favoured by children. Ashton highlighted that recycling materials containing POPs contaminates the resulting products and continues the legacy of hazardous emissions and exposure; a process she said, is especially damaging to a true circular economy.
Ashton concluded that the links between POPs and plastics don’t end with distinct and specific products that require careful management. She underscored that microplastics, ubiquitous in the world’s ocean, are hydrophobic in nature and adsorb and carry carcinogenic POPs, assisting in their long-range transport. That is why we are attempting to phase out microplastics, she explained.
Alison Watson, Life Cycle Initiative, UNEP outlined the architecture of the Global Commitment. Led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and UNEP, the Global Commitment was launched in 2018 to unite businesses and governments in changing the way plastics are produced and consumed; specifically through accelerating their elimination and innovating reusing, recycling, and composting of plastics. The vision for circular economy sits at the centre of the Commitment, as it aims to keep the plastics we use within the economy, not the environment. As more than 1,000 organizations – from plastic producers and leading brands to governments and waste management companies – support the Commitment, they now endorse the common vision for a circular economy, collaborate with other stakeholders, report annually and publicly on the progress made, and strive to achieve the common vision by 2025 through their voluntary frameworks. Progress is being made across the six key action areas1. As of February 2022, the Global Commitment’s signatories account for more than 20% of all plastic packaging produced globally. Watson, acknowledging the acute impact from plastics pollution to SIDS, indicated that joining the Commitment will assist SIDS to “step up activities and adopt voluntary measures” that materialize “circular economy approaches” and provide “statistical information on environmentally sound management of plastic waste”, as articulated in the paragraph 15 of the UNEA 5.2 Resolution. In other words, the Global Commitment can help its signatories speed up action as the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee sessions to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution take place in parallel.
Liz Butcher, Ministry of Environment, New Zealand shared a case study that demonstrates New Zealand’s experience of the Global Commitment. She highlighted that the Global Commitment sits as a part of New Zealand’s broader plastics policy action. Butcher explained, that from 2018, as the build-up of plastics emerged as one of the top national concerns, initial actions were taken through bans on microbeads and single-use plastic bags, and the release of the report Rethinking Plastics in Aotearoa, New Zealand. In 2018, New Zealand also established its plastic packaging declaration that encourages businesses to introduce 100% recyclable or compostable plastic packaging by 2025. New Zealand joined the Global Commitment in 2019, which now anchors the country’s plastics action. Butcher explained that New Zealand joining the Global Commitment has signaled its domestic industries on the country’s ambitions and priorities for plastics. As of 2022, the Ministry of Environment published a National Plastic Action Plan that features impactful yet realistic roadmap for the four-year period (2022-2025) alongside a broader programme for waste; which are aligned with the target areas under the Global Commitment.
João Sousa, Global Marine and Polar Programme, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) introduced two IUCN programmes that provide examples of effective and quantifiable solutions that help SIDS address plastic leakage as part of a systems approach. Sousa called into question the current reality where a plastic product, after a lengthy and expensive oil extraction and refining process, manufacturing and transportation, is negatively valued at the end of its life, and simply discarded. He outlined the Close the Tap Programme which quantifies plastics using an equation that includes plastics input (e.g., single-use, long-lasting, drifting plastics), output (plastic exported as products or waste) and leakages (plastic stock, mismanagement from the tourism sector, incineration practices, landfill operation, and microplastics). The Plastic Waste Free Island Project, executed in the Caribbean and Pacific, quantified plastic waste per sector through a sector and material flow analysis and identification of plastic streams (recyclable v. non-recyclable). Sousa explained it is now aiming to match entrepreneurs with investors, which can lead to creation of a scalable, repeatable framework on addressing plastic pollution from SIDS perspective.
In the ensuing discussion, a participant questioned the most difficult aspect about quantifying the plastics produced, discarded and leaked. João Sousa responded it is the most challenging to build capacity for governments to conduct quantification beyond the initial work provided via multilateral projects, as the quantification process can be expensive, lengthy and laborious.
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The Implementing Sustainable Low and Non-Chemical Development in Small Island Developing States (ISLANDS) Programme is a $515-million, five-year initiative backed in part by the Global Environment Facility, which is providing $75 million. It supports 33 small island developing states in four regions – the Atlantic, Caribbean, Indian and Pacific oceans – to reduce and manage hazardous waste and improve chemicals management in their territories. ISLANDS is led by UNEP, in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and the Inter-American Development Bank.