UNITED NATIONS: With the manufacturing of plastic on the rise worldwide and creating ever extra air pollution, the United Nations surroundings chief warned that humanity can not simply recycle its method out of the mess, and she or he known as for a complete rethink about the best way we use plastics.
“There are completely different type of onramps to the freeway to options. However I feel all people recognises that the established order is simply not an possibility,” mentioned Inger Andersen, director of the UN Atmosphere Program, in an interview on Thursday (Sep 21) with AFP on the sidelines of the Normal Meeting in New York.
Andersen was speaking two weeks after the publication of the primary draft of a future worldwide treaty on plastic air pollution, which is predicted to be finalised by the top of 2024.
It displays the wide selection of ambitions of the 175 international locations concerned, notably the hole between those that argue for a discount within the manufacturing of uncooked polymers and those that insist on reuse and recycling.
First, Andersen mentioned the intention was to do away with as many single-use plastics as potential, “eliminating what’s frankly not essential: That factor that’s wrapped in plastic that is fully senseless, that’s possibly even wrapped by nature itself”, like an orange or a banana.
Then, “there is considering the product itself”.
“Does the product have to be liquid? Can we rethink the product … can or not it’s powder, can or not it’s compressed, can or not it’s concentrated?” she mentioned, saying that when getting into a grocery store, she goes straight to the cleaning soap aisle to see if strong variations can be found.
“We even have to scale back the general provide of latest uncooked polymer,” she mentioned, noting that this was one possibility within the draft textual content of the treaty.