Treaty Opportunity to Reduce Plastic Pollution Tossed Away in Geneva | | Saudi Arabia, China, India, Russia, USA all Join to Block Effort to Stem the Tide of Plastic Waste | | |
Geneva, Switzerland. August 15, 2025. After six major intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) meetings and numerous side meetings across almost 3 years, the effort to create a binding international treaty to minimize plastic pollution grounded to a halt in the early morning today at INC5.2, as more than 3,700 participants representing 184 United Nations member countries and over 619 observer organizations1 realized the bitter truth that there could be no consensus among nations on how to solve the global plastic waste crisis. The Basel Action Network (BAN), which closely follows the world's only existing treaty on waste -- the Basel Convention, described the outcome and laid the blame.
"Almost all plastic comes from oil and fracking gases -- fossil fuels which are then combined with over 16,000 chemicals, many being toxic, to make the plastics we are faced with. But fossil-minded countries such as the US, China, India, Russia and the oil-rich Gulf States, were adamant that they would never agree to reduce plastic production – the climate, our environment and our health be damned,” said Jim Puckett, BAN's Founder and Chief of Strategic Direction.
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Civil society health, environmental, and human rights organizations hold last-minute press conference to
urge countries to think of future generations and a clean and healthy planet, rather than profit from
fossil fuels. Photo: Break Free From Plastic, August 14, 2025.
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The oil and gas industry are known to be seeking to triple the amount of plastic produced in the next three decades, mostly by increasing the use of single-use plastic packaging, particularly in developing countries.2 Even while it is very clear the amounts of plastic waste are unmanageable and overflowing landfills, filling the seas, and often are shipped for alleged recycling/dumping in developing countries.3
Despite the one-country, one-vote nature of the United Nations, the creation of new international law proceeds by consensus and not majority rule. In this way, a minority of wealthy countries doing the bidding of their oil, chemical and related industries, can hold sway as spoilers over a majority of countries and block real solutions. These countries aimed all along to focus global attention away from upstream solutions to create less plastic, towards downstream "solutions" -- leveling the blame on consumers and developing countries for not being tidy enough in their lifestyles and management methods to collect wastes for recycling. Instead of conceding what most experts are now realizing -- that plastics recycling will always remain a marginal and often a harmful enterprise, the oil and chemical industry mantra remains "don't worry, we can recycle it."
| | Thai Customs Agents opening yet another container arriving full of yet more plastic wastes from rich developed countries such as the UK, Japan and the United States. Photo credit: Earth Thailand | | |
BAN and many other civil society organizations called today's INC Plastic Treaty result a process failure of global governance, but noted that the global march to reduce harmful plastics is unstoppable and inevitable with the INC process already having contributed a wealth of new data on the impacts of plastics demonstrating that all phases of the plastics life-cycle -- including recycling, create persistent, toxic waste and products, which in turn are fonts of even more dangerous micro-plastics. Until that fact changes, NGOs like BAN are calling for policymakers, industry, and consumers alike to avoid plastic in their lives, and foster alternatives to its uses, wherever possible.
"Despite this particular effort falling short, the greater campaign to educate the public about plastic and its increasingly evident harms, has just begun," said Puckett. "Following this initial treaty effort, we now have all of the data and science we need to make the vision of a more plastic-free world -- a reality."
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For more information:
Jim Puckett, Basel Action Network
email: jpuckett@ban.org
signal: JimPuckett.11
Pui Yi Wong, Basel Action Network
email: puiyi.wong@ban.org
Christopher Hudak, Basel Action Network
email: christopher.hudak@ban.org
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About Basel Action Network
Founded in 1997, the Basel Action Network (BAN) is a 501(c)3 charitable organization of the United States, based in Seattle, WA. BAN is the world's only organization focused on confronting the global environmental justice and economic inefficiency of toxic trade and its devastating impacts. Today, BAN serves as the information clearinghouse on the subject of waste trade for journalists, academics, and the general public. Through its investigations, BAN uncovered the tragedy of hazardous electronic waste dumping in developing countries. For more information, see www.BAN.org.
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