Overview

• Negotiations for a legally binding plastics treaty will resume in Geneva from August 5 to 14 to address pollution across the full lifecycle of plastics
• A coalition of over 70 parties, including the EU, Canada and Australia, is pushing for binding limits on plastic production and controls on thousands of hazardous chemicals
• Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia and China’s like-minded group is resisting measures beyond recycling mandates and opposing specific production and chemical restrictions
• Recent studies estimate 27 million tonnes of nanoplastics in the North Atlantic’s upper layer and identify more than 4,200 toxic chemicals in plastics, underscoring the urgency for strict controls
• Health experts have issued eight key recommendations for the treaty text, urging caps on production, bans on toxic chemicals and the embedding of public health objectives in binding obligations