Another attempt at a plastics treaty

(Fat chance)

5 - 14 August 2025, Geneva, Switzerland

The second part of the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment (INC-5.2), is scheduled to take place from 5 to 14 August 2025 at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Watch Webcast.

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However, like the worthless climate COP meetings, these plastics meetings are also occupied by the fossil-fuels industry, which, since they are the providers of the energy that drives civilization, permanently unable to allow change of any kind. This vast over-population and excessive consumption was enabled by fossil energy and use of plastics. You may wish to avoid plastics, but there are too many people to make clothing out of wool, cotton, linen and shoe leather. It can’t be done. This entire civilization/urbanization project must be scaled back. But these global meetings are a nice junket for the attendees, and another way to blow out more CO².

From Reuters:

GENEVA/WASHINGTON, Aug 6 (Reuters) - The United States has sent letters to at least a handful of countries urging them to reject the goal of a global pact that includes limits on plastic production and plastic chemical additives at the start of U.N. plastic treaty talks in Geneva, according to a memo and communications seen by Reuters.

In the communications dated July 25 and circulated to countries at the start of negotiations on Monday, the U.S. laid out its red lines for negotiations that put it in direct opposition to over 100 countries that have supported those measures.

"We will not support impractical global approaches such as plastic production targets or bans and restrictions on plastic additives or plastic products - that will increase the costs of all plastic products that are used throughout our daily lives," said the memo Reuters understands was sent to countries who could not be named due to sensitivities around the negotiations.

One of the world's leading producers of plastics, the U.S. has also proposed revising the draft objective of the treaty to reduce plastic pollution by eliminating a reference to an agreed "approach that addresses the full life cycle of plastics", in a proposed resolution seen by Reuters.

A source familiar with the negotiations told Reuters it indicated that the U.S. is seeking to roll back language that had been agreed in 2022 to renegotiate the mandate for the Treaty.

"Refusing to include plastic production in this treaty is not a negotiation stance. It is economic self-sabotage," Juan Carlos Monterrey-Gomez, head of delegation for Panama, told Reuters.

"Those blocking progress are not protecting their industries. They are locking their people out of the next wave of prosperity."

The U.S. stance broadly aligns with the positions laid out by the global petrochemicals industry, which stated similar positions ahead of the talks, and a number of powerful oil and petrochemical producer countries that have held this position throughout the negotiations.

Over 100 countries have backed a cap on global plastic production.

In the U.S., the Trump administration has numerous measures to roll back climate and environmental policies that it says place too many burdens on industry.

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So don’t expect meaningful results. A meaningful treaty is beyond the capacity of the attendees. Plastics pollution is the second-highest threat to all life, following nuclear war as #1. Global warming ranks somewhere lower - plastics ARE going to take down most life forms, they truly are humanity’s indelible mark on this planet.

Here are some sections of The Lancet’s report of the plastics situation, in preparation for the treaty meetings. You may read the whole article and see the charts and graphics on the DOI site listing below, or d/l the PDF file. This is part of a new series by The Lancet titled “The Lancet Countdown.”

The Lancet Countdown on health and plastics

www.thelancet.com Published online August 3, 2025 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(25)01447-3

Introduction

Plastics are the defining material of our age. Plastics are complex, manufactured chemical materials comprising a polymer matrix and multiple additional chemicals. More than 98% of plastics are made from fossil carbon—gas, oil, and coal. Plastics are flexible, durable, convenient, and perceived to be cheap. Plastics are ubiquitous in modern societies, and have supported advances in many fields, including medicine, engineering, electronics, and aerospace. It is increasingly clear, however, that plastics pose grave, growing, and underappreciated dangers to human and planetary health. Moreover, plastics are not as inexpensive as they appear and are responsible for massive hidden economic costs borne by governments and societies.

The Minderoo–Monaco Commission on plastics and human health concluded in 2023 that plastics endanger human and planetary health at every stage of their lifecycle—in feedstock extraction, primary production, product fabrication, transport, use, recycling, and following disposal into the environment.

Plastics’ harms to human and planetary health are worsening, driven mainly by continuing annual increases in the production of new plastics. Global plastic output has grown more than 250-fold—from less than +2 megatonnes (Mt) in 1950, to 475 Mt in 2022, with the most rapid increases seen in the production of single-use plastics. Consequently, plastic waste generation has increased in parallel. Without intervention, it is projected that global plastic production will nearly triple by 2060.

Summary of key findings from the Minderoo–Monaco Commission

The Minderoo–Monaco Commission on plastics and human health presented a comprehensive assessment of plastics-associated harms to human and ecosystem health.

• Current patterns of plastic production, use, and disposal cause disease, disability, and death at every stage of the plastic lifecycle.

• Infants and young children are highly susceptible to plastics-associated harms. Early life exposures to plastics and plastic chemicals are linked to increased risks of miscarriage, prematurity, stillbirth, low birthweight and birth defects of the reproductive organs, neurodevelopmental impairment, impaired lung growth, and childhood cancer. Early-life exposures to plastic chemicals can contribute to reduced human fertility and increased risks of non-communicable diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease in adult life.

• Plastic production is highly energy-intensive, releases more than 2 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent and other climate-forcing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere each year, and harms health by accelerating climate change.

• Increasing plastic production is the main driver of worsening harms to human and planetary health.

• Because less than 10% of plastic is recycled and plastic waste can persist in the environment for decades, an estimated 8 billion tonnes of plastic waste or 80% of all plastic ever made, now pollute the planet.

• The ocean is the ultimate destination for much plastic waste, and each year, an estimated 10–12 million tonnes of plastic enter the ocean. Many plastics appear to resist breakdown in the ocean and could persist for decades.

• Microplastic and nanoplastic particles (MNPs), which result from the breakdown of larger plastic materials, are an emerging threat to health. While the health impacts of MNPs are still incompletely understood, increasing numbers of studies report the presence of microplastics in multiple human tissues and are beginning to link MNPs to disease.

• Plastic is expensive. It is responsible for health-related economic losses that include health-care costs (eg, costs of physician services, hospitalisation, and medications) and productivity losses (eg, lost economic output or earnings resulting from disease, disability, or premature death). In 2015, the health-related costs of plastic production amounted to almost US$600 billion globally—more than the gross domestic product of New Zealand or Finland. Chemicals in plastics, such as PBDE (flame retardant), bisphenol (BPA; monomer), and di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP; plasticiser) are responsible for additional health-related economic costs. In the USA alone, the annual costs of diseases caused by PBDE, BPA, and DEHP exceed $675 billion.

• These estimates undercount the full costs of plastics-related health damages because they examine only a few countries and only a subset of plastic chemicals. The costs are externalised by fossil fuel and plastic manufacturing industries and borne by governments and taxpayers.

• Current patterns of plastic production, use, and disposal are unsustainable and socially and environmentally unjust. Plastics-associated harms disproportionately damage disempowered and marginalised populations.

Addressing these inequities will require a multifaceted approach that centres on justice and incorporates equity and inclusivity into all levels of policy and decision making.

Microplastic and nanoplastic particles MNPs can be intentionally generated or formed from the breakdown of plastic products. While intentional uses of manufactured MNPs (eg, cosmetics) are being curtailed in many jurisdictions, the release of increasing volumes of plastic waste into the environment has resulted in environmental accumulation of MNPs and increasing MNP concentrations in multiple environmental media.

Various industrial sectors contribute to MNP emissions.

In the EU, tyres, textiles, paints, plastic pellets, detergent capsules, and textiles are estimated to contribute as much as 90–93% of MNP emissions, with an overall rising trend of 7–9% between 2016 and 2022. In addition, mechanical recycling releases considerable quantities of MNPs to the environment. Similar to the plastic products from which they originate, MNPs consist of a polymer matrix plus thousands of embedded and adsorbed chemicals as well as adsorbed biological materials and bacteria.

Due to their persistence and transboundary transport, MNPs have been found in the most remote reaches of the planet, from the Arctic to deep seas, at high altitudes, and in soil and groundwater. MNPs have been detected in meats, fish, shellfish, fruit and vegetables, drinking water, and processed foods.

Food contact materials are an additional source of MNPs and are credibly linked to human exposure. Airborne MNPs are also ubiquitous. Outdoor sources include atmospheric fallout, coastal ocean spray, plastic-modified roads, tyre wear on roadways, paving materials, and mechanical recycling plants. MNPs have been detected indoors in classrooms and homes. Occupational exposure to airborne MNPs occurs in multiple instances, including plastic moulding, recycling, and synthetic textile (eg, nylon flock) manufacturing.

Human health effects of MNPs

MNP characteristics, including size, shape, polymer, and chemical composition, have each been reported to be relevant to cellular effects in vitro. Understanding and quantifying human health risk in relation to these cellular effects will require further research on exposure pathways, pharmacokinetics, and possible internal exposures, and animal, clinical, and epidemiological research to evaluate dose–response relationships.

Such research is in the early stages. A recent systematic review investigating the digestive, respiratory, and reproductive effects of MNPs reports high or moderate quality evidence for impact across multiple outcomes, primarily from animal studies, with suggested links to lung and colon cancer.

Human clinical and epidemiological research will be dependent on further developments in the methods for detecting and quantifying exposure, but early studies have now been published with emerging techniques. These studies include reports of possible links between MNPs and lung diseases, inflammatory bowel disease, liver cirrhosis, myocardial infarction, and stroke. While further analytical method development in support of clinical and epidemiological research is urgently needed to more confidently evaluate health risks, the potential that MNPs could harm human health cannot be ignored. Given current widespread human exposure to MNPs and the concatenation of findings across in vitro mechanistic research, animal studies, and early human observational studies, a precautionary approach is essential.

In aquatic ecosystems, MNPs considerably affect both animal and plant health. MNPs alter the behaviour and physiology of animals, impair their swimming abilities, and make them more susceptible to predators. MNPs cause injury and death in important plant species, such as mangroves, seagrasses, and salt marshes. These plants are crucial to ecosystem health as they provide habitat and food for various organisms, stabilise coastlines, and aid nutrient cycling and CO2 uptake. MNPs have been shown to reduce photosynthesis in terrestrial and aquatic plants, thus threatening food security and hindering CO2 sequestration. Additionally, MNPs cause oxidative stress in plants, disrupting physiological, metabolic, and reproductive processes, including seed germination and absorption and translocation of nutrients, affecting plant growth and proliferation.

In terrestrial ecosystems, improperly discarded plastic waste contaminates soil, harming its microbiome, reducing soil health and fertility, and affecting essential ecosystem functions, such as nutrient cycling and water filtration. Similar to marine mammals, wildlife and livestock can be harmed by plastic waste. Additionally, waste plastic that washes into waterways can clog drainage systems and increase the risk of flooding. The environmental degradation caused by plastics disrupts food webs, nutrient cycling, and entire ecosystems, leading to a decline in biodiversity.

All these effects contravene the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which clearly lays down the Health Policy principle to reduce plastic pollution to preserve coastal and marine biodiversity.

By degrading ecosystems, plastic waste and MNPs harm human health as they disrupt provisioning, supporting, regulating, and cultural ecosystem services crucial for health, wellbeing, and sustainability of human societies. These services include providing fish and seafood, crops, fresh water for drinking and irrigation, and raw materials, such as seaweed, timber, and salt, while supporting the nutrient cycle and regulating water and air quality.

Conclusion

The world is in a plastics crisis. This crisis has worsened alongside the other planetary threats of our time and is contributing to climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss. Long unseen and unaddressed, the magnitude of the plastics crisis is now widely recognised, and its implications for both human and planetary health are increasingly clear. An estimated 8000 Mt of plastic waste pollute the environment. MNPs and multiple plastic chemicals are found in the most remote reaches of the planet and in the bodies of marine and terrestrial species worldwide, including humans. The 2023 analysis by the Minderoo–Monaco Commission on plastics and health found that plastics harm human health at every stage of the plastic lifecycle, that these health-related damages result in massive economic losses that are borne by society, and that plastics-associated harms fall disproportionately on low-income people and at-risk populations.

Three factors are responsible for worsening of the plastic crisis.

The first and most fundamental is that global plastic production is accelerating.57 Current increases in production are projected to continue, and in the absence of intervention, global plastic output is on track to nearly triple by 2060.

Inadequate recovery and recycling, coupled with a lack of operationalised circularity, is a second driver. Despite decades of effort, less than 10% of plastics are recycled, and thus 90% are either burned, landfilled, or accumulate in the environment. Unlike paper, glass, steel, and aluminium, chemically complex plastics cannot be readily recycled. It is now clear that the world cannot recycle its way out of the plastic pollution crisis. The persistence of plastics is a third key driver. Most plastics do not biodegrade in the environment, nor do they break down into their constituent elements; instead, they fragment into ever smaller particles (eg, MNPs) that can persist for decades in salt and fresh water, on land, and in living organisms. Polymers, such as PVC and some plastic chemicals (eg, PFAS) that are based on carbon–halogen bonds, are especially durable.

The consequence is that at least 80% by the weight of all plastic ever made is still present in the environment. For much of this plastic, its ultimate repository is the ocean.

The plastic crisis is not inevitable. Although there is much we still do not know about plastics’ harms to human health and the global environment, and more research is certainly needed, we have enough data now to know that these harms are already considerable, and there is enough information on trends in plastic production to recognise that in the absence of intervention, they will get worse.

Control of the plastics crisis will require continuing research coupled with the science-driven interventions—laws, policies, monitoring, enforcement, incentives, and innovations—that have successfully and cost-effectively controlled other forms of pollution and catalysed systems change.

The purpose of this Lancet Countdown on health and plastics is to be an independent, indicator-based, healthfocused global monitoring system that tracks and regularly reports on progress toward reducing plastic exposures and mitigating plastics-associated harms to human and planetary health as the Global Plastics Treaty comes into force and as regional, national, and subnational interventions are implemented. By making plastics-related impacts on human and planetary health visible, this Countdown will bring health to the centre of the plastics conversation. Our hope is that the reports generated by the Countdown provide robust data and insights to inform evidence-based policy making on plastics at all levels—international, regional, national, sub-national, and local—for the benefit of public health.

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