Guilbeault disappointed as plastic treaty talks end with no deal

By Jordan Omstead, The Canadian Press on December 1, 2024.

Canada's environment minister Steven Guilbeault says he's disappointed that international negotiations on a treaty to end plastic pollution finished this week without an agreement. Guilbeault arrives to a caucus meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Canada’s environment minister says he’s disappointed that international negotiations over a treaty to end plastic pollution have ended without an agreement.

Yet Minister Steven Guilbeault says he’s still hopeful a deal can be struck as negotiators make plans to meet again next year.

The talks held in South Korea this week were supposed to be the fifth and final round of negotiations, held over two years, on the world’s first international treaty to address plastic pollution.

Countries are still at an impasse over whether the treaty should reduce the total plastic on Earth and put legally binding controls on toxic chemicals used to make plastic.

Canada and 100 other countries have called for a treaty to include a global target for reducing plastic production to sustainable levels, a position opposed by some oil- and plastic-producing countries, including Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Guilbeault says he would plan to use next year’s G7 summit set be hosted in Alberta as a platform to advance the issue.

Canada’s own ban on some single-use plastics is currently tied up in court. Plastic makers and chemical companies successfully argued that the government was too broad when it declared all plastic to be toxic, the designation Canada used in order to enact that ban.
The case is currently before the Federal Court of Appeal.
In 2020, Canada produced more than 7.1 million tonnes of plastic and only five per cent of it was recycled material. Almost five million tonnes of plastic ended up as waste, with less than 10 per cent of it recycled.

Global plastic waste is set to nearly triple by 2060 without action, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Made from oil and other fossil fuels, plastics also account for an estimated 3.4 per cent of global greenhouse-gas emissions.

Plastic pollution is a wildlife killer and a contaminator of soil and water supplies around the world.

Microplastics, no bigger than the width of a pencil eraser down to about the width of mitochondria, are virtually ubiquitous, showing up everywhere from human blood to Arctic Sea ice. In animals such as fish, these broken-down bits of larger plastics have been linked to lower levels of growth and reproduction, among a host of other issues.

Researchers are still trying to determine more conclusively whether microplastics carry a direct risk to human health, and at what level.

– With files from The Associated Press

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 1, 2024.