More than 430 million tonnes of plastic are produced annually, two-thirds of which are short-lived products that soon become waste. The world generates an increasing amount of 139 million metric tonnes of single-use plastic waste. Plastic production until 2060 will treble if the “Business as usual” scenario continues. To stop the linear development and to switch over to circular development, an International Treaty on Plastic Pollution is to be implemented.
In a news conference hosted by IPN, Tatiana Țugui, director of the Association of Environmental Experts Pro Mediu, said that as a result of negotiations on the treaty, it was proposed reducing the quantity of single-use plastic waste and preventing the abandonment and elimination of this waste at storage places by introducing separate collection and reusing plastic waste. This way, the volume of plastic waste is to be decreased from 200 million to 40 million tonnes. Annually, about 20 kg per capita of packing is introduced into the country, these being often single-use packing. These imported products represent 10-15% of all imports.
The goal of the Treaty is to include a series of technical provisions that would consider how to promote sustainable production and consumption of plastics from product design to environmentally sound waste management, through resource efficiency and safe and just circular economy approaches. The document aims to start dealing with the problem from the production stage.
The countries propose setting reuse and recycling targets and further applying the extended producer responsibility mechanism.
The Treaty will also restrict the chemical constituents in plastic products, which later penetrate the environment and will envision measures to retrieve plastic from oceans and to recycle this later.
Tatiana Țugui also said hat the business community supports the Ministry of Environment’s initiative to promote the packaging deposit system. “We all realize that when we purchase any liquid product, we pay for the content of packing. The cost of packing is not visible for everyone to realize that it costs a particular amount. When the promoted packaging deposit system is introduced and the cost of packaging is visible, everyone will start to calculate how much they throw into the dustbin. This will motivate the people to return the packing to collection points,” stated Tatiana Țugui.
Note: IPN News Agency offers the right of reply to persons who consider they were touched by the news items produced based on statements of the organizers of the given news conference, including by facilitating the organization of another news conference in similar conditions.
