World leaders, environmental groups and business representatives are gathered in Ottawa for the penultimate round of talks to create a legally-binding plastic pollution instrument through the United Nations.
The goal of this is to develop a treaty aimed at ending plastic pollution, including microplastics, from entering terrestrial and marine ecosystems by 2040.
“We won’t ban our way out of plastic pollution, we won’t recycle our way out of plastic pollution, and we won’t reuse our way out of plastic pollution. We need to do a better job of all these things at different steps and different types of plastics,” Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault said at the conference Tuesday.
“Our hope is to help countries do a lot of the legwork so that in South Korea at the end of the year we can focus on a certain number of elements, and we can finalize this agreement.”
At a previous UN plastics summit in Egypt, it was agreed that a treaty limiting plastic pollution will need to be legally binding and adopted by the end of 2024 when the meeting resumes in late November.
“I think the treaty needs to be, let’s call it 75 per cent of the way there,” Rick Smith, executive producer of the documentary Plastic People, said on what success looks like at this round of talks.
“Most of the tough nuts need to be cracked in Ottawa this week if the nations of the world are going to be successful in South Korea later this year and inking the deal on the final treaty.”
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According to the UN’s working document, plastic pollution is on track to increase 70 per cent by 2040.
An emerging concern with this increase is the prevalence of microplastics showing up everywhere, including in people, according to recent studies.
The UN estimates that 82 million tonnes of plastic waste was mismanaged in 2020 alone, with a 40-per cent increase projected by 2040.
This mismanagement is where leakage into the broader environment takes place.
What are the concerns about plastics?
Environment and Climate Change Canada estimates only about 10 per cent of plastic waste is actually recycled. The rest is diverted to landfills or shipped overseas. As this waste breaks down, microscopic particles can enter the broader environment such as waterways, which makes its way up the food chain to people.
“Scientists now have found microplastics everywhere they have looked in the human body — in human placentas and breast milk, in our hearts and in our blood, in our gut,” Smith said.
“Our bodies are riddled with these microscopic plastic particles that ooze their chemical ingredients into our bodies on a minute-by-minute basis. And scientists are really concerned.”
A growing body of research shows that microplastics may be linked to cancer, respiratory infections, cancer and fertility challenges among other health issues. In 2020, scientists found microplastics in human placentas for the first time.
“So, the health hazards of our current use of plastic can’t continue. So, we’re going to have to move towards safer materials,” Smith told Global News.
On Tuesday, Guilbeault announced a $3.3-million grant for 21 businesses aimed at finding ways to better recycle plastics and reduce waste in areas like shipping and restaurant supplies.
Andrew Anstey, a chemical and biological engineering assistance professor at the University of Ottawa, says that the make-up of many plastic goods makes them difficult to recycle.
“We usually have several thin layers of different plastics with different properties. And separating those is actually very hard because they’re pretty much glued or welded together,” Anstey explained.
“When we try to recycle that into one product, they’re not miscible. So, they don’t really they don’t play well together. So, we get kind of a kind of a crappy mix of several different plastics that doesn’t have any of the properties we want.”
Part of Anstey’s research involves looking for ways to turn this plastic waste into a more useable compound.
There are other options being developed, such as cornstarch-based plastics that are compostable, but Anstey says scaling these alternatives to meet the current plastic demand is an issue.
“They work pretty well, but they’re simply not the production at a scale that makes it economical. And a big thing holding that back is the properties of plastics,” he explained.
“So often in terms of mechanical properties or the thermal properties, they simply don’t stack up to a lot of the kind of mature resins that we have had on the market for 50 years.”
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