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UN sentence date for new conversations about a global plastic contract

The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) announced a new round of talks on a global contract to limit plastic waste on Monday after the last negotiations in December end during the break.

Members of groups who take part in the talks, as official observers told Newsweek that UN environmental officers had the next talks for 5 to 14 August in Geneva, Switzerland.

Officially known as an international negotiating committee 5.2, the discussions will bring together national negotiating representatives as well as observers from industrial and non-profit groups with specialist knowledge of public health, environmental justice and marine science.

On June 12, 2024, the people on boats collect in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, recyclable plastics from the heavily soiled Citarum River in Batujajar.

Timur Matahari/AFP via Getty Images

The conversations could be the highlight of years of work to get a global agreement on a plan to grasp plastic pollution, which kills the marine wild animals, harm human health and heat the planet.

Scientists estimate that the plastic waste of a garbage trolley gets into the oceans every minute, where large debris, sea turtles and marine mammals with entanglement and smaller plastics threatens into the Ocean Food network.

Health researchers have concerns about the health effects of many chemicals that are used in plastic production and the accumulation of microplastics in our body.

The petrochemical facilities that produce plastics and their component materials can also represent environmental pollution threats to neighboring communities and spend large amounts of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

In A Newsweek Event in the Horizons in December, an expert body that was thought about the last round of the UN discussions in Busan, South Korea, and what is at stake in the next negotiations.

Despite the calls of almost 100 countries to limit harmful plastic products and chemicals, the South Korea talks ended without consensus for a global contract. Discussion participants who represent environmental groups, industrial and health research institutions agreed that the talks were not failure.

“We would rather have a little more time to receive a really strong contract with global obligations than a weak and diluted contract,” said Allison Lin in the panel discussion in December.

The discussion participant Dr. Leonardo Trasande, who leads the NYU center for the investigation of environmental dangers, agreed.

“I am glad that the contract process will stall because we will have a better contract if we work out our problems,” said Trasande. “Ultimately, we need independent science to wear the day.”

The discussion participants discussed paths to reduce plastic waste through product design improvements, more financing for waste development systems and increased recycling. However, a political approach turned out to be the most critical: a reduction in the total amount of global plastic production. That was the key crop point in the South Korea talks.

The next contract talks in Geneva will also take place with a new presidential administration in the United States, while President Joe Biden's environmental officials had adopted an upper limit for plastic production. It is unlikely that this policy follows it.

While many countries, states and large companies have taken steps to ban problematic plastics and to define ambitious goals for reducing waste, the collective efforts remain far behind what is necessary to contain the flood of plastic waste.

In a report published in November by the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, many signatories, despite progress between the signatories to their global commitment to plastic waste, “probably miss” key 2025 targets “.