UN Agreement on Plastic Waste Fails

As of this morning, it is clear that the negotiations, which took place in Geneva from August 5 to 14, have failed. Around 3,700 people representing 184 countries and over 600 organizations participated in the talks.

According to recent reports, the interests of the negotiating states were still far apart. Talks on a global agreement to combat plastic pollution have been extended by one day. After dozens of countries rejected the latest draft text during frantic last-minute negotiations, discussions will continue.

The Geneva talks were scheduled to conclude on Thursday with the adoption of a treaty. On the second to last day, Luis Vayas Valdivieso of Ecuador presented his own draft treaty, which was rejected by virtually all delegations.

Uncompromising

On one side is the High Ambition Coalition, comprising more than 100 countries with particularly ambitious goals, which is calling for production to be limited to sustainable levels. These include the EU and dozens of countries in South America, Africa, and Asia. They want to phase out single-use plastics such as cups and cutlery, promote reusable plastic products, and encourage a circular economy in which a product's raw materials are recycled and reused.

On the other side are primarily the oil-producing countries, which see oil as their livelihood.

Al Jazeera cites individual negotiators such as:

Bangladesh: the draft "fundamentally fails” to reflect the "urgency of the crisis” … "it did not address the full life cycle of plastic items, nor their toxic chemical ingredients and their health impacts”.

Kuwait speaking for the Like-Minded Group: the text had "gone beyond our red lines”,

UAE: The draft goes "beyond the mandate” for the talks,

Qatar criticized the lack of a clear definition of the scope of application and stated, "We do not understand what obligations we are entering into.”

The US position can be read at FastCompany:

"The U.S. does not support global production caps since plastics play a critical role throughout every sector of every economy, nor does it support bans on certain plastic products or chemical additives to them because there is not a universal approach to reducing plastic pollution, the State Department said.”

Environmental organizations WWF and Greenpeace agreed that this outcome was preferable to a lazy compromise.

According to WWF, "In this case, no agreement is better than one that cements the status quo at the UN level instead of providing a real solution to the plastic crisis."

Greenpeace said: "A weak agreement would be worse than no agreement at all. It would sell stagnation as progress."

What it's all about:

According to the German Ministry of the Environment, 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced to date. Of that, 6.3 billion tons have become waste, most of which has ended up in landfills. An estimated 152 million tons of plastic waste have accumulated in rivers and oceans worldwide.

Germany is the largest producer of plastic in Europe. However, plastic waste that cannot be recycled is used for energy production here.

My position on this

Why is it not possible to be aware of input from oil-producing states: They want the treaty to focus primarily on waste management …

… in order to then, or better yet simultaneously,
- reduce plastic waste wherever possible: No single-use also means no renting hotels or Airbnbs that do not offer cutlery!
and
- why do we (communities, countries, etc.) allow people to pollute rivers with waste.
- why do we (communities, countries, etc.) allow people to dump waste.

Waste is full of plastics

Yours,

Werner Bauer

Form your own opinion:
• The Las Vacas River Project by Biosfera Gt in Guatemala
• Malaysia strengthens plastic waste controls to close the door on ‘waste colonialism’ from other countries
• BANs: Plastic Waste Transparency Project

Sources:

https://www.fastcompany.com/91383106/us-international-plastic-treaty-talks-trump
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/7/plastic-credits-a-false-solution-or-the-answer-to-global-plastic-waste
https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/plastik-abkommen-scheitern-100.html

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