LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Nearly half a billion tons of new plastics are produced every year worldwide, and without policy changes, analysts expect that number to grow about 70% by 2040. But countries failed to reach a global deal on cutting plastic pollution earlier this month. Margaret Spring was at that meeting in Busan, South Korea. Under the Obama administration, she worked on climate policy in Congress as a senior official in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Spring is now chief conservation and science officer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. She told me more about the outcome of the talks.
MARGARET SPRING: Well, the talks didn't really collapse. They just are continuing. There was ultimately agreement to move to another meeting and extension of the meeting, but also there was a real difference of opinion on the scope of the treaty. How far upstream in the plastic life cycle, so to speak, should this treaty address? There is really no way to fix this problem without also including reducing the amount of plastic we make. And so a small group of countries was very interested in seeing this only be a waste management treaty. That's where we are today, particularly in the United States, and we're not fixing the problem.
FADEL: When you say upstream, you mean just not producing it?
SPRING: Yeah. There are a number of measures upstream, so you can actually reduce the amount of primary plastic you make. That is the ultimate need right now because we are producing too much, and we're using it for too many things. And also, you can reduce the types of plastic products that are made, for example, through bans or phasing out.
FADEL: And where is the opposition to that?
SPRING: There's a group of countries that call themselves the like-minded countries that tend to be those that produce oil and gas. The most vocal would be Russia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait. And those countries spoke up many times to say that they didn't want to reduce production. They didn't want to have chemicals be regulated, and they were objecting to a number of issues in the financial mechanism, which is critical for making this whole thing work.
FADEL: And that's because plastic is made from oil and gas?
SPRING: Correct, 99% or so of plastic is made from fossil sources. And it is seen as a growth area for oil and gas. They consistently raise the concern that it would affect their economies. However, we see the economic impacts of plastic on health and communities around the world, particularly in the Global South are substantial. And so if you look at costs and benefits, the benefits are on the side of ending plastic pollution.
FADEL: In 2021, you chaired a committee that found that the U.S. is a leading contributor to plastic pollution. Has anything changed since then?
SPRING: Yes, our major recommendation to the administration was that there needs to be a nationwide strategy around plastic pollution, which goes from production to disposal. And the administration issued in July a really sweeping strategy for dealing with these issues. In the meantime, there have been a number of moves that the EPA has made - recycling improvements dealing with chemicals in plastic. The administration issued an executive order to phase out single-use plastics in federal procurement. So every country has to do something now. There's no need to wait for the treaty.
FADEL: Now, you said you've been to all these meetings, and this was the most constructive, although a deal didn't come to fruition. How confident are you that an agreement can be reached the next round?
SPRING: We haven't set the date yet for the next meeting, which is being called INC-5.2. The longer we wait, the worse it gets, though. So maybe over a hundred countries spoke very clearly that they needed binding measures in production and in chemicals and products of concern. We have some provisions already in the text that seem binding around design and waste management, which is great, but there's just hard conversations to be had about how far we can go. So I'm hoping that we can get to a strong treaty with some areas of compromise that will not compromise the ability of the treaty and the agreement to make a difference for people and the planet.
FADEL: That's Margaret Spring, chief conservation and science officer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Thank you so much, Margaret.
SPRING: Thank you, Leila. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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