Around 75 states announced their support in principle for the project at a UN conference in Geneva on Thursday, the German delegate and State Secretary in the Federal Environment Ministry, Jochen Flasbarth, told journalists. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) warned against “drowning” the earth in plastic.
Plastic waste must be prevented
More than 1,000 representatives from 140 countries and non-governmental organizations took part in the conference in Geneva organized by Unep. In a draft international agreement submitted by Peru and Rwanda, reference is made in particular to the risk posed by microplastics. The goal must be a “circular economy” that prevents large amounts of plastic waste.
Reducing plastic waste could take years
The delegates to the UN Environment Conference in Nairobi will deal with the proposed resolution in the coming year. According to Flasbarth, 25 countries are already fully supporting the project, and 50 more announced their provisional support at the conference in Geneva.
According to the State Secretary, long negotiations are to be expected. He assumes that it will take months or even years before an international agreement to reduce plastic waste can come into force.
“More plastic than fish”
The French State Secretary Bérangère Abba, who is responsible for biodiversity, warned that without joint international action there would be “more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans” in 2050. According to Unep, around 300 million tons of plastic waste are produced every year.
About 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced since the 1950s. Around 60 percent of the waste was disposed of in landfills or in nature. Every year, more than a million seabirds and more than 100,000 marine mammals die as a result of plastic pollution.