Climate

Plastic pollution is a serious issue of global concern which requires an urgent and international response involving all relevant actors at different levels. This page aims at listing relevant information, research, data and/or press releases issued by our partners in Geneva and other institutions around the world.

The oil, gas, and petrochemical industry wields substantial power in both the climate and plastics treaty negotiations, and has used that power to stymie progress in both. Rather than repeat the failures of the climate negotiations, plastics negotiators should seek to create a “plastics club” for ambitious action. 

Through a review of the scientific literature on the environmental impacts of plastics, the research team shows that plastic pollution is now altering some major processes at the scale of the entire Earth system. This impact extends to global issues like climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and the use of freshwater and land.

This paper articulates the economic and financial basis for establishing a cap on global plastics production. The production cap, once adopted as part of the final legally binding agreement, is expected to serve as the linchpin to end plastics pollution.

This report models whether a virgin plastic production reduction target of 40% by 2040 (40×40) could keep the plastics industry within a 1.5°C carbon budget. It outlines the methodology used to predict how the global economy would respond to a 40×40 target, including modeling different scenarios based on business-as-usual (BAU) demand and reduced-demand scenarios. 

Just before INC5, this booklet gives an overview of negotiation priorities and challenges. The global treaty must not condemn our planet and communities to runaway climate change fuelled by unchecked petrochemical expansion, the collapse of ecosystems saturated with plastic pollution, and avoidable disease from exposure to microplastics and plastic chemicals.

The report exposes the climate footprint of the planned petrochemical buildout in America. It identifies the most climate-damaging projects and products, demonstrates carbon capture’s inability to significantly mitigate emissions, and uncovers how taxpayers are being misled into funding polluting projects sold as ‘climate solutions.’ 

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.