Key figures
- Humanity was expected to consume over 500 million tonnes of plastic in 2024 (UNEP)
- About 400 million tonnes of that quickly becomes waste
- Treaty talks failed in Busan (December 2024) and Geneva (August 2025)
- A new chair, Chile’s Julio Cordano, was elected in February 2026
Plastic is one of the defining materials of modern life. It keeps food fresh, makes cars lighter and medical equipment sterile. It is also everywhere it should not be: in rivers and oceans, on remote beaches and mountain tops, in the stomachs of seabirds and whales, and increasingly in human blood, lungs and placentas in the form of microscopic particles. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that humanity consumed more than 500 million tonnes of plastic in 2024, and that a large share of it rapidly became roughly 400 million tonnes of waste.
Much of that waste is never recycled. Globally, only a small fraction of plastic is turned into new products. The rest is incinerated, sent to landfill, dumped in open sites or burned in the open air — a common practice in places without waste collection, which releases toxic smoke. Millions of tonnes leak into rivers and the sea every year, where plastic breaks down into ever smaller fragments that can persist for centuries.
The challenge: a treaty in limbo
In March 2022, member states of the United Nations Environment Assembly agreed to negotiate a legally binding global treaty to end plastic pollution. Crucially, the mandate covered the full life cycle of plastic — from the extraction of oil and gas used to make it, through production and product design, to waste management. The decision was hailed as the most significant environmental agreement since the Paris climate accord of 2015, and negotiators set themselves the ambitious goal of finishing the treaty by the end of 2024.
Four years later, there is still no treaty. Negotiating sessions were held in Uruguay, France, Kenya and Canada, each producing longer and more complex draft texts. The session that was meant to be final, in Busan, South Korea, in December 2024, ended without agreement. So did a second ‘final’ round in Geneva in August 2025, which dissolved into chaotic late-night meetings before collapsing.
The central dispute concerns production. The European Union, Pacific island states, many African and Latin American countries and a ‘High Ambition Coalition’ of more than 70 nations want the treaty to cap or reduce the production of new plastic, arguing that the world cannot recycle its way out of the crisis when production is set to keep growing. A group of major oil- and plastic-producing countries, however, insists that the treaty should focus mainly on waste management, recycling and product design, leaving production decisions to individual nations. Disagreements over chemicals of concern, health protections and financing for developing countries have added further complications.
Procedure has become a problem in its own right. Because the talks operate by consensus, a small group of countries can block progress. Researchers writing in the journal Nature this year argued that the process itself needs reform if it is to succeed, and that separating debates on production caps from debates on finance has made it easy to pit countries against each other.
After the previous chair resigned in 2025, countries met in Geneva in February 2026 and elected Chilean ambassador Julio Cordano to lead the negotiations. His roadmap included informal meetings of heads of delegation in Nairobi from June 30 to July 3, 2026, to review every element of the draft treaty. The next formal round is expected at the end of 2026 or early in 2027. Environmental groups welcomed the renewed momentum but criticised the decision to exclude civil society observers from the Nairobi meeting.
What can be done now
Many researchers and campaigners argue that the world cannot afford to wait for a treaty. Plastic production is projected to keep growing for decades under current trends, and every year of delay adds millions of tonnes of pollution. The good news is that many of the most effective solutions are already being used successfully at national, regional and local levels.
The first priority is to reduce the amount of plastic that is produced and used in the first place, especially short-lived single-use items. Bans and levies on plastic bags, straws, cutlery and polystyrene food containers have been adopted by dozens of countries, including Canada, and consistently reduce litter. France has banned plastic packaging on most fresh fruit and vegetables, and several countries have banned microbeads in cosmetics.
The second is reuse. Refillable bottles, returnable containers for takeaway food and deposit-return schemes cut the need for single-use packaging at its source. Countries with well-designed deposit systems — where consumers pay a small deposit on a drink container and get it back when they return it — routinely collect the vast majority of bottles and cans, providing clean material for recycling. Several European cities are piloting city-wide systems for reusable coffee cups and food containers.
The third is extended producer responsibility (EPR). Under EPR, companies that put packaging on the market pay for its collection and recycling. This gives them a financial incentive to use less packaging and to design it so that it can be recycled more easily. The European Union’s new packaging regulation combines EPR with binding reuse targets, minimum recycled content requirements and restrictions on unnecessary packaging. Several Canadian provinces, including Quebec and British Columbia, have shifted responsibility for household packaging onto producers.
Design matters, too. Many products combine several types of plastic, colours and additives in ways that make them impossible to recycle. Simpler, single-material packaging, transparent rather than coloured plastics and the phasing out of problematic chemical additives improve both recycling quality and human health.
Finally, waste collection is a basic but vital service that billions of people still lack. Much of the plastic that reaches the ocean comes from fast-growing cities in Asia and Africa where waste is not collected at all. Investing in collection systems — and supporting the millions of informal waste pickers who already recover much of the world’s recycled plastic — can stop pollution before it reaches rivers.
What you can do
Consumers can carry reusable bags, bottles and cups, choose products with less packaging, return deposit containers and support shops that offer refill options. Just as important is to support policies that make these choices easy and affordable for everyone.
A strong global treaty would make these solutions universal and create a level playing field for business. But the tools to fight plastic pollution exist today. Every tonne of plastic that is never produced is a tonne that never needs to be collected, sorted, burned or fished out of the sea.
Sources
UNEP, Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution; IISD explainer on INC-5.3 (February 2026); Climate Home News (March 2026); Center for International Environmental Law statements (February and July 2026); Nature Comment (2026); WWF.
