Can we end plastic pollution? Negotiators land in Ottawa this week to work on a global treaty

A key week of negotiations kicks off Tuesday, as representatives from 176 countries descend on Ottawa to tackle global challenges posed by plastics.

The fourth and penultimate instalment of talks tees up a final session later this year in Korea, where parties hope to sign onto a binding international treaty on plastic pollution.

«This process is really a once-in-a-generation opportunity to end plastic pollution. It's a historic process,» said Eirik Lindebjerg, the World Wildlife Fund's global plastics policy lead.

To date, negotiations have amounted to a bulky 69-page draft. Negotiators will now work to whittle that text down to a list of core issues. Succeeding at that will be key to scoring a global treaty at the final session.

In the draft's opening lines, the parties agree that «rapidly increasing levels of plastic pollution represent a serious environmental problem at a global scale.»

But the tension point is whether plastic production or waste management should be the focus of the agreement, with conflicting interests slowing negotiations to date.

«Ottawa really needs to be a turning point,» said Graham Forbes, the global plastics project leader at Greenpeace. «We're in a make-or-break moment for the global plastics treaty negotiations.»

Plastics are everywhere

Plastic waste is a ubiquitous global problem, with sevenbillion tonnes of the synthetic material generated globally since the 1950s, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, with some 98 per cent of single-use plastic produced directly from fossil fuels, rather than recycled materials.

The OECD estimates that just nine per cent of plastic created has ever been recycled.

Most of it ends up in landfill, some is burned, and other plastic pollution ends