Oil-producing nations and corporate lobbyists are standing in the way of a meaningful agreement to fight plastic pollution - NPI's Cascadia Advocate

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It took me a vaca­tion in Baja to ful­ly appre­ci­ate the long tena­cious cam­paign by.Seattle City Coun­cil mem­ber Mike O’Brien to ban pol­lut­ing sin­gle use plas­tic bags. short mould in injection moulding

The desert was stun­ning, but there was plas­tic every­where, par­tic­u­lar­ly on beaches. 

I’ve since learned that nine to four­teen mil­lion met­ric tons of the stuff go into the earth’s oceans each year. This doc­u­men­tary short from The Sto­ry of Stuff dives into the details — and it’ll take less than five min­utes of your time to watch. Press play below: 

We are trash­ing the plan­et with trash. 

The stuff is lethal to life in our oceans, killing per­haps a mil­lion seabirds each year. 

Sea tur­tles are severe­ly impact­ed. I remem­ber demon­stra­tors in tur­tle cos­tumes, seek­ing glob­al atten­tion, at the WTO sum­mit a quar­ter cen­tu­ry ago.

Under the aus­pices of the Unit­ed Nations, del­e­gates from around the world gath­ered recent­ly at Busan in South Korea to sign an agree­ment to reduce plas­tic pro­duc­tion and ban sin­gle use plas­tic prod­ucts. They were joined by two hun­dred and twen­ty lob­by­ists from the fos­sil fuel and plas­tic industries.

The result was an impasse, and the usu­al agree­ment to meet again next year.

Del­e­gates from more than one hun­dred coun­tries, notably much of the devel­op­ing world, sup­port­ed a bind­ing agree­ment. But major fos­sil fuel pro­duc­ers — notably Rus­sia, Iran and Sau­di Ara­bia — balked at lim­it­ing plas­tics production. 

They insist­ed that any action on sin­gle use prod­ucts be voluntary.

The chief Sau­di del­e­gate, Abdul­rah­man al-Geadz, engaged in sophistry, say­ing: “If you address plas­tic pol­lu­tion, there should be no prob­lem pro­duc­ing plas­tics because the prob­lem is the pol­lu­tion, not the plas­tics themselves.”

But the foot dragg­gers were called out by Juli­et Kabera, a del­e­gate from Rwanda. 

In his words: “We voice our strong con­cerns about ongo­ing calls by a small group of coun­tries to remove bind­ing pro­vi­sions from the text that are indis­pens­able for the treaty to be effective.”

Here in the Pacif­ic North­west, O’Brien got his bag ban. 

The Wash­ing­ton Leg­is­la­ture enact­ed a ban on sin­gle use car­ry out bags as well as dis­pos­able plas­tic uten­sils. Large paper car­ry out bags are legal if 882 cubic inch­es or larg­er, and con­tain at least forty per­cent post-con­sumer recy­cled con­tent or wheat straw.

Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon, and Cal­i­for­nia have all enact­ed bag bans. 

A ban in British Colum­bia took effect on July 15th.

The Euro­pean Union has recent­ly enact­ed a bag ban that also includes plas­tic stir­rers, straws, plates and cut­lery. Chi­na enact­ed its ban in 2008. 

A ban in India, sim­i­lar to the EU’s, took effect in July of 2022.

The con­se­quences of plas­tics pol­lu­tion are at our doorstep. What’s known as the Great Pacif­ic Garbage Patch cov­ers an area of the east­ern Pacif­ic three times the size of France. Almost all the pol­lu­tion is in tiny frag­ments, eighty per­cent from land based sources. The Patch holds an esti­mat­ed eye pop­ping 1.8 tril­lion pieces of plastic.

Despite the bans, stud­ies show the equiv­a­lent of one garbage truck full of pol­lu­tants goes into the world’s oceans every minute. Sci­en­tists have count­ed 267 species impact­ed, with a lethal com­bi­na­tion of suf­fo­ca­tion, star­va­tion and drowning.

Cana­da has enact­ed a nation­wide bag ban, but the U.S. has lagged. 

Dur­ing her first stint as House Speak­er, Nan­cy Pelosi decreed that plates, cups and cut­lery in Capi­tol din­ing facil­i­ties be com­postable. The require­ment was scrapped the moment Repub­li­cans regained con­trol of the House.

We are seem­ing­ly addict­ed to waste, even in inter­ment. In a famous scene from The Grad­u­ate, Mr. Robin­son gives one word of career advice to young Ben­jamin: “Plas­tics.”

As the Busan nego­ti­a­tions broke down, Gra­ham Forbes of Green­peace held out hope for a bind­ing treaty: “The oppor­tu­ni­ty to secure an impact­ful plas­tics treaty that pro­tects our health, bio­di­ver­si­ty and cli­mate remains in reach.”

Sure hope he’s right.

# Written by Joel Connelly and last updated at 9:30 AM Pacific Time

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Joel Connelly is a Northwest Progressive Institute contributor who has reported on multiple presidential campaigns and from many national political conventions. During his career at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, he interviewed Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and George H.W. Bush. He has covered Canada from Trudeau to Trudeau, written about the fiscal meltdown of the nuclear energy obsessed WPPSS consortium (pronounced "Whoops") and public lands battles dating back to the Alpine Lakes Wilderness.

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