“We swallow a bank card every week”, negotiations for an international treaty resume

They passed through Canada and Uruguay, Kenya and Paris: here they are in Busan since Monday, in South Korea, for a final week of negotiations. Barely after leaving COP 29 on the climate with a strong feeling of failure, the representatives of 176 countries are this time focusing on plastic. With the mission of reaching an agreement, in the form of a “legally binding instrument“, according to the UN formulation, reducing the production of these materials which are teeming in our daily lives and our trash cans.

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions are linked to the production of plastics, which is close to 500 million tonnes on the planet. And should reach, if nothing is done, 800 million tonnes in 2060, considering that the products resulting from recycling, around 300 million tonnes, would only be added to the half billion of virgin plastic, as this was a minimum threshold…

Divergent interests

For now, the recycling rate is capped at around 8%. “For manufacturers, virgin PET, the transparent plastic from water bottles, currently sells for 1,215 euros per ton, compared to 1,395 euros for recycled PETindicates François Pyrek, director of community services at Suez Environnement in the South-East. This difference against recycling could be reduced by taxes“. One solution among many others, as the question is complex, involves the entire lifespan of plastic and comes up against a lot of divergent interests.