Even if resin caps are dropped, plastics treaty still signals less virgin material

A global plastics treaty that tries to cap virgin resin production has been both a goal for some key parties in the negotiations and a red line for plastics companies that don't want to see it.

It's too soon to say whether the treaty would include something like an explicit hard cap — some are skeptical it would. But an agreement could reinforce other steps that do the same thing and drive down use of virgin plastics, a point made by plastics executives at the treaty's late May negotiating session in Paris.

"Our belief is that circularity and making sure that we get more circular products and enable an economy that is built on circularity will at the end result in that as well," said Benny Mermans, chairman of the World Plastics Council and a Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. executive. "It will lead to a reduction in virgin plastics use."

Similarly, a delegate from the American Chemistry Council said at the negotiations, held May 29 to June 2 in Paris, that a treaty that incentivizes new business models for plastics could lead to less virgin plastics use and do it in a way that doesn't dictate to countries.

"If we put in place models of circularity and we're making that transition, a natural occurrence probably will be less virgin plastic and plastic products," said Joshua Baca, vice president of plastics at ACC. "That is very different than a global regulatory scheme that basically ties countries' arms behind their backs and dictates what they could do."

Virgin caps are very much a point of debate within the treaty. Advocates for caps and other strict measures to move away from virgin fossil-based plastics say they're needed because waste management systems can't cope with the volume of plastics used now, let alone if production ramps up rapidly, as some projections say.

The High Ambition Coalition, a group of 50-plus countries including Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Japan, is explicitly calling for "binding provisions in the treaty to restrain and reduce the production and consumption of primary plastic polymers to sustainable levels."

And a group of large consumer product makers like Unilever plc, Coca-Cola Co. and Nestle are in a coalition presenting a common position in the talks endorsing reduction of plastic production.

"It's a really clear message we're bringing here to governments that actually leading businesses think that measures to address the production and use of plastics are going to be critical to addressing plastics pollution in general," said Ed Shepherd, a spokesman for the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty and a Unilever senior sustainability manager.

In an interview in Paris, Shepherd said Unilever has reduced its use of virgin plastics by 13 percent since 2019.

"As a company, we've committed to moving away from virgin plastics use, as have all the companies within the [Ellen MacArthur Foundation] global commitment, which is about 20 percent of global plastic packaging volumes," he said.

Some studies say that cap or no cap, virgin plastic production would decline if the industry adopts new, circular business models.

Industry group Plastics Europe released a report, "ReShaping Plastics: Pathways to a Circular, Climate Neutral Plastics System in Europe," in 2022 that outlined various scenarios, including a net zero carbon emissions scenario that projected demand for virgin fossil-based plastics could drop 68 percent by 2050 as industry shifts to more recycling and other feedstocks.

Mermans noted that report in his interview and said the European industry will be releasing road maps in coming months to reach various 2050 scenarios.

Still, for plastics groups at the Paris talks, explicit caps in the treaty were a red line.

The Plastics Industry Association said the agreement should foster circular use of plastics without caps or bans that it said would stifle innovation.

CEO Matt Seaholm said an agreement should set "ambitious but reasonable" goals that the United States is able to sign on to.

"The largest concern, and we've kind of heard of a fairly loud drumbeat here at these meetings, about capping production, about turning off the tap, is kind of the new mantra that we hear really too many times," he said. "It's quite disconcerting that the tap that you're trying to turn off should be about pollution going into the environment. It's not about the production of the material at the beginning of life."

Seaholm said the language around caps or reduction can be very nuanced, and he said the industry favors reduction and recycling as strategies.

"There are great steps that can be taken, you know, that achieve that reduction as a goal," he said. "But it's not simply an arbitrary number that is determined this is how much of the material needs to be produced, because that's not market-driven."

The U.S. is not at a member of the High Ambition Coalition, although a senior U.S. diplomat did speak at an HAC event in Paris in the days ahead of the talks and said they share the same overall goals.

Two members of Congress have weighed in to urge the U.S. to align more closely with the HAC. A May 25 letter from Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., to President Joe Biden said the U.S. should make reducing plastics production a core element of the treaty.

Merkley and Huffman urged the State Department not to align with "petrostates like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and big polluters like the People's Republic of China, who are trying to hold the process back or are pushing for a weak structure built around nationally determined contributions."

One of the debates in the treaty is over to what degree the document should set requirements all countries must meet or instead rely on individual national action plans.

There were signs of those disputes on the negotiating floor in Paris. Saudi Arabia, in particular, led a floor fight over treaty rules for the first three days of the five-day session that delayed moving to substantive discussions.

Some delegates to Paris said the treaty language or governments themselves could take steps that reduce virgin plastics use, with or without a hard cap.

Erin Simon, vice president and head of plastic waste and business at the World Wildlife Fund, said in an interview ahead of the Paris meeting that negotiators could consider a list of problematic or high-risk materials to ban or phase down and include it within an annex to the treaty.

She pointed to the Montreal Protocol, a 1987 agreement that created lists of chemicals that damaged the ozone layers and that countries agreed to phase out, as a model of a successful international environmental agreement using that approach.

Anja Brandon, the associate director of U.S. plastics policy for Ocean Conservancy, said that even if it's difficult to get a formal treaty through Congress, the executive branch or state governments could act in ways that are similar to production caps or other upstream measures.

"I think it's a safer bet to start thinking about how we can push to do more with the executive branch or work even at the subnational level to make sure that we are living up to the U.S.'s commitments," Brandon said. "The executive branch has a lot of authority through their own procurement methods, through executive orders, through economic policies and subsidies for certain industries, namely the fossil fuel industry."

In their May 25 letter to Biden, Merkley and Huffman acknowledged difficulties in Congress in passing the kind of plastics legislation they favor and urged the administration to strengthen its negotiating position and make plastic production reduction a priority in the talks.

"We are painfully aware that the United States Congress is divided and that the prospect for passing ambitious action through Congress in the near term is small," they wrote. "Rather than using our divisions as a justification for holding the world back, the United States must recognize the severity of this crisis and leverage the opportunities available through executive authority and push for a majority-based process that will allow for a high-ambition agreement."

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