Environment

The Global Plastic Treaty Africa Community Sensitisation Guidebook is a comprehensive resource designed to empower community-driven initiatives by enhancing the understanding of the Global Plastic Treaty and facilitating effective advocacy campaigns.

Finance will be critical to the success of the global plastics treaty. Adequate and predictable finance is a key element to a successful agreement. This policy brief explores various options for sourcing, managing, and disbursing finance.

Limiting the global production of primary plastics is necessary to curb greenhouse gas emissions as well as the environmental and health impacts of plastic pollution. This report proposes one possible approach.

Many people think zero waste is just about reducing waste but it’s actually much more than that. It’s about our health, the climate and about taking care of the planet. The free online course to learn about the real solutions to plastic pollution.

This brief demonstrates the central role of plastic polymers in the full life cycle of plastics from supply chain and pollution perspectives. It looks at precedents to establish that the full life cycle approach mandated in UNEA Resolution 5/14 encompasses the production of plastics, understood as transforming raw materials into a specific substance — in this case, plastic polymers.

This brief aims to inform the plastic treaty negotiations by analyzing and comparing three models used in MEAs to control the production of specific substances or the emissions of greenhouse gasses (GHG). Its goal is to draw lessons from these models and translate them into specific policy recommendations.

This report outlines the significant burdens that plastic pollution imposes on state and municipal systems, which bear the financial, environmental, and health costs of managing these effects. It also provides a comprehensive roadmap for legal professionals and government officials to initiate litigation against those responsible for the proliferation of plastic waste.

The pollution resulting from rampant overproduction of virgin plastics is irreversible, directly undermines our health, drives biodiversity loss, exacerbates climate change and risks generating large-scale harmful environmental changes. As the plastics pollution crisis continues to grow, so does the case for a global plastics treaty that tackles the issue head-on and seeks to reduce the production of virgin plastics.

This study of children’s products from 26 countries revealed that toxic flame-retardant chemicals in recycled electronic waste results in pervasive contamination of new plastic children’s toys and related products. Recycling materials that contain persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and other toxic substances contaminates new products, creates human and environmental exposure, and undermines the credibility of recycling.

The report, with three case studies of river ecosystems in Vietnam, Canada, and Australia, reviews the significant harmful effects on fisheries from toxic chemicals and demonstrates that chemicals and other pollutants worsen the productivity-degrading effect of overfishing. The report notes the triple planetary crises of biodiversity loss, climate change, and chemical pollution.