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Plastics & the Environment – Why We Need a Plastics Treaty

47th UNEP/UNESCO/BMUV International Postgraduate Course on Environmental Management

Presentation
Date
Location
Berlin, Germany
Speech

On 13 March 2024, Doris Knoblauch (Ecologic Institute) gave a lecture on "Plastics and the Environment" highlighting the need for a global plastics treaty at a postgraduate course, where 21 experts from ministries, authorities, municipalities, non-governmental organizations and industry from low-income countries and emerging economies were represented and exchanged. The focus was on why plastic pollution is a problem and why we urgently need an international, legally binding plastics treaty.

The core statements of the lecture include:

  • What plastics are (monomers vs. polymers) and what chemically characterises them.
  • Plastics bring with them a variety of chemical impacts, amongst them endocrine disruption.
  • Where does the plastic waste come from? There is a clear correlation: the higher the gross national income, the more plastic waste is produced.
  • Plastic pollution occurs during each life stage, already during the extraction and production phase.
  • We urgently need an international, legally binding plastics treaty.

The presentation was part of the 47th UNEP/UNSECO/BMUV International Postgraduate Course on Environmental Management for Developing Countries, organized by the Centre for International Postgraduate Studies of Environmental Management (CIPSEM) at the Technical University of Dresden.

Plastics have too many negative chemical impacts if uncontrolled: We need a plastics treaty!

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Source URL: https://www.ecologic.eu/16620