What role should chemical recycling play in the UN Plastics Treaty?

This week marks the fifth and final Session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution, a ‘once-in-a-generation’ opportunity for global collaboration on plastics.

Simon Hansford

Chief Executive Officer

Simon leads the organisation and is responsible for the overall delivery of its corporate strategy. Prior to Itero, Simon led the Corporate Finance & Legacy operations at global insurance company, Swiss Re. He brings 19 years’ corporate strategy and finance experience to the team.

It's sometimes hard to fathom the sobering scale and severity of the plastics crisis, with huge quantities of plastic pollution in our natural world. 

• Every day, 8 million pieces of plastic pollution find their way into our oceans. 

• Each year, 12 million tonnes of plastic is dumped into the ocean. 

• A staggering 80% of all studied marine debris is plastic. 

• An estimated 5.25 trillion macro and microplastics are now floating in the open ocean, weighing up to 269,000 tonnes. 

  (Reference: Surfers Against Sewage)

The time for effective solutions is overdue, and it's in this context that the UN Plastics Treaty moves forward this week into the penultimate negotiation, a historic opportunity to collaborate at the global level to keep plastic in the economy and out of the environment.

Approved by the United Nations in March 2022, the treaty aims to address the full life cycle of plastics, from design to production and disposal. It targets plastic pollution in all its forms, including the pervasive problem of microplastics. The treaty is expected to have far-reaching implications for businesses and economies worldwide, pushing them towards more sustainable practices. 

The fifth and final Session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC-5) is taking place from 25 to 29 April 2024 in Busan, South Korea. While at the Fourth Negotiations in Ottawa, member states produced a compiled draft with many bracketed sections representing text that had not yet been agreed to, in between negotiations Luis Vayas, the chair of the INC process, prepared a non-paper which represented the consensus between nations and could be used as the basis of negotiations in the final session.

We will be closely monitoring the negotiations around the draft treaty in this decisive last session, and are hopeful for a meaningful and transformative outcome.

We hope to see continued focus on enshrining circularity at the core of this treaty. At Itero, we believe that a key component to tackling the plastics crisis involves taking a circular approach, shifting away from our current linear consumption model. The International community should focus their approach on reducing production and consumption, while simultaneously upscaling circular solutions and technologies.

In this context, chemical recycling plays a crucial role. By converting hard-to-recycle mixed plastics into a replacement for naphtha, we provide petrochemical companies with a raw material for plastic production. This circular process helps divert plastic waste away from landfills and oceans, as well as dramatically reducing the need for the extraction of crude oil in production of virgin-quality plastics, thus reducing environmental pollution.

Itero believes that the introduction of chemical recycling into the plastic recycling ecosystem can support circular transformation by valorising waste plastic. A fundamental shift in how plastic waste is valued can incentivise both the effective collection and recycling of waste plastics as well as providing sufficient compensation for the remediation of waste from the environment back to a circular product. This could be particularly transformational when technological solutions can be developed and/or shared across regions where plastic pollution is causing both environmental and social harm.

When executed responsibly as one of many elements within a broader systemic approach to plastic management, extensive lifecycle analysis research has shown that chemical recycling can and will contribute significantly to mitigating the plastics crisis. Many solutions will be required and all need to be part of the conversation.

The plastics crisis is a daunting challenge, but with the right mix of systemic approaches, innovative technologies, and international collaboration, we believe it is a challenge we can overcome. This treaty is a historic opportunity for the global community to collaboratively address the plastics crisis. We are looking forward to the discussions and the resulting strategies that will shape the future of plastics management. Together, we can build a fully circular plastics economy. 

Read more here: https://www.unep.org/inc-plastic-pollution/session-3