A sunset panorama of Mullion Cove in Cornwall

Alok Sharma, President of COP26 in Glasgow, said in March of 2021 that 

“demand is snowballing for commencing negotiations on a new global agreement to tackle marine plastic litter.” In the UK over the past year, this demand has manifested in several ways among different key stakeholder groups.

Alok Sharma speaks at COP26 in November 2021

Beyond the UK Government’s support for a new treaty to 

, there are a multitude of intersecting domestic efforts to curb plastic pollution. What follows is a summary of multiple reports on plastics over the past few years from four different stakeholder groups in the plastics crisis: 

. Taken together, this can be seen as a cross-section of domestic stakeholder views on plastic in the leadup to the 

UK Plastic Treaty Dialogues and INC-1 in November 2022

OPLN is a neutral convener of stakeholders. The inclusion of reports here does not imply favor for any one viewpoint. Subsequent OPLN media installments will include reports from more stakeholders and stakeholder groups.

briefing paper on plastic waste in the UK

 (published March 2022) offers a range of useful information of recent government positions on the plastics issue, including information on the UK Government’s and devolved Governments' plans and ambitions to reduce avoidable plastic waste.

The UK has various obligations under international and national law relating to the shipment of waste abroad, particularly under the 

UN Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Waste and their Disposal (the Basel Convention)

. The Basel Convention has been recently amended to require that a 

 is used for the shipment of certain types of plastic waste.

The Scottish Government has consulted on 

 (DRS), expected to begin in August 2023. DRS infrastructure, such as reverse vending machines, will start rolling out from summer 2022. Work is planned to introduce schemes across the rest of the UK in due course.

 since its launch in 2018. GPAP brings together world leaders, decision-makers, and industry to take collaborative action on tackling plastic pollution in developing countries. GPAP has so far established partnerships in Indonesia, Ghana, Vietnam, Pakistan, Nigeria and the state of Maharashtra (India).

The UK’s contribution to GPAP supports the development of inclusive, multi-stakeholder platforms, with the aim of engaging 25 countries by the year 2025. The activities funded through this programme will help tackle the threat of plastic waste before it enters the ocean and support the transition to a circular economy.

The UK supports the collaborative efforts of GPAP and the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a UK based NGO working globally to reduce the environmental costs of the food, clothing and plastic packaging we use. See the following press release for further information:

WRAP and GPAP Partner to Tackle Global Plastic Pollution together

 was the first to demonstrate the widespread occurrence of microscopic particles in the environment. Work led by 

 showed that particles which he described as ‘microplastic’ had accumulated in the oceans since the 1960s and were now widespread.

The work of tracking plastic pollution in the environment continues at Plymouth through various projects, among them 

. Started in 2020 and funded through 2024, the project brings together internationally recognised polymer scientists, marine and terrestrial biologists and ecotoxicologists to assess biodegradable plastics and their effect on the environment.

: “For years, biodegradable materials – including plant-based bioplastics – have been highlighted for their potential to reduce the environmental impact of packaging waste. However, there hasn’t been the detailed research to identify precisely how that might be achieved. Through this project, we hope to establish, in the open environment as opposed to managed waste systems, what works and what doesn’t, in terms of the materials’ characteristics and effects.”

Recent updates from Plymouth show some new tech being implemented to track microplastics. Francesca De Falco, a research fellow on BIO-PLASTIC-RISK, 

posted pictures of new Py-GCxGC-TOFMS machines on location

, these machines use Pyrolysis (Py) in combination with Comprehensive Gas Chromatography (GCxGC) and Time-Of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (TOF-MS). While other analytic strategies are more commonly used, Py-GCxGC-TOFMS “requires minimal sample preparation and provides powerful chromatographic separation with high quality deconvoluted mass spectral data.

: “Fantastic to have this working, well done for all the hard work. This will add a new dimension to our

The Environmental Investigation Agency, a UK-registered charity that works on a range of environmental campaigns, is one of the leading organizations in the global plastics treaty process and domestic efforts to end plastic pollution in the environment.

A series of recent reports and thought-starters from the EIA and its collaborators over the years have laid out major problems with plastic use in the UK, and have considered in detail what a successful global plastic treaty would look like. 

For three years in a row, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Greenpeace UK surveyed the major supermarkets and grocery retailers in the on their efforts to reduce plastic pollution. The full report of this effort, along with company scorecards, is available 

Some of EIA’s recommendations to plastics stakeholders included:

Addressing the drivers of single-use packaging

. Promote shorter supply chains and seasonal produce; ban excessive packaging used for marketing objectives

. Avoid false solutions involving non-conventional plastics (bio-based, biodegradable, compostable). In cases where biodegradable packaging must be used, it should be certified to British Standard EN 13432 and only sold in municipalities which have the appropriate industrial composting/anaerobic digestion facilities.

. Introduce requirements for suppliers to implement best practice measures to prevent plastic pellet loss, with third party auditing and reporting requirements. Ensure that certification to the Publicly Available Standard (PAS) on pellet loss, adopted in July 2021, is a universal obligation for all relevant actors in their supply chain.

Scorecard from Checking out on Plastics III 

Initial Considerations for a Plastics Treaty (2022)

"We have the tools, now let’s build the house."

Soon after the UNEA 5.2 Resolution, EIA provided their initial considerations of key paragraphs in the text of the resolution. EIA's briefing, which can be found in full here, considers two operative paragraphs of the treaty. The report concludes as follows:

"The adoption of UNEA Resolution 5/14 was a historic moment in international environmental policymaking. While the task at hand may seem daunting, a substantial body of work has already been undertaken in preparation for the negotiations, not least the discussions and research delivered by the Ad-hoc Open-Ended Expert Working Group on Marine Litter and Microplastics.

We are not starting from scratch and, in other instruments, have effective models from which to draw inspiration, particularly the Montreal Protocol which is widely considered the most successful MEA (multilateral environmental agreement) in the world."

Additionally, EIA's microsite on the plastics treaty can be found 

Large Companies - Tesco and Sainsbury’s

From September 2021, Tesco has provided customers in ten large Tesco stores in the east of England with a choice to reduce their plastic footprint. Through a partnership with Loop, a global reusable packaging platform, Tesco has offered 88 products in reusable containers on which customers pay a refundable 20p deposit.

Tesco brand super berry granola in Loop’s reusable product packaging

According to Tesco, the impact of switching just three items to reusable packaging would be huge. “If customers in the 10 stores switched their recyclable tomato ketchup, cola and washing up liquid bottles to the reusable Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Coca-Cola and Ecover alternatives, the packaging would be used and reused more than two and a half million times a year.”

Customer using Loop’s The Returns Point

Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of Loop and TerraCycle, said: "The consumer reaction to Loop in these first Tesco stores will prove pivotal in refining the Loop offering and ultimately we hope to scale reuse across more stores and the number of product lines available. Tesco is the perfect partner to bring Loop to retail in the UK due to its commitment to sustainability, in combating plastics waste and in its operational scale as the UK’s biggest grocery retailer.”


Per the retailer’s resource hub on plastics and 

, Sainsbury’s latest examples of progress on reducing plastic packaging include:

Removed all plastic packaging from brand lightbulbs and batteries, saving 15 tonnes of plastic per year

Removed the plastic lids from brand cream pots, saving 106 tonnes of plastic per year

Removed the plastic film from broccoli, saving 49 tonnes of plastic per year

Replaced the plastic used in our brand two-litre ice cream tubs, meaning they are now easily recyclable at home, replacing 215 tonnes of hard-to-recycle plastic per year.

Still, Sainsbury’s says it is behind its target trajectory for plastic reduction

Plan for Better Report 2021-2022: “We have seen an absolute reduction in plastic packaging of 2.2 per cent from our 2018 baseline and relative reduction (tonnes per million units sold) of 4.7 per cent from our 2018 baseline. Year-on-year the tonnage has decreased by 626 tonnes to 117,333 tonnes, which puts us behind our target trajectory. We recognise that we have a lot more to do to reduce our plastic packaging tonnage and meet our target to reduce this by 50 per cent by 2025.”

Check in soon for more reports and updates on the UK Plastics Treaty Dialogues, set for Fall 2022. 

UK Plastics Reports 2019-2022, A Digest

Durdle Door, a natural limestone arch overlooking the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, England.

This is your Global Treaty Dialogues Report for 7/20

At the UN Ocean Conference in early July, the 

 (UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) announced our partnership for a series of dialogues that will bring together stakeholders from all parts of the plastic system.

For the UK Plastics Treaty Dialogues (UK PTDs), OPLN and Defra have identified 80 impact organizations across civil society, the value chain, industry, academia, ESG finance, waste management/recyclers, and more to shape a treaty that works for all stakeholders. This activist-to-industry network will assemble for six invitation-only meetings over the next two years in order to build capacity for the UK’s participation in the Global Plastics Treaty.

For maximum stakeholder impact, each UK PTD session is set to take place within a month of the next Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee meeting. In this framework, all UK stakeholders will be able to communicate their positions directly to the experts representing them at the UN-level. The experts can then bring stakeholder insights to their UN colleagues while they negotiate what has been called “

the most significant environmental deal since the Paris accord

Quick facts: the Global Plastic Treaty’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC)

The INC for the Global Plastics Treaty is the body responsible for completing the draft text of the global, legally binding plastics treaty.

The INC was formed in March 2022, when UNEA 5.2 voted to start negotiations on the treaty. The text of the Resolution is available 

The INCs goal is to - over at least five sessions - build consensus from government representatives of UN Member States in order to complete this draft by the end of 2024. Once the draft is complete, the UN will hold a diplomatic conference to open it for signature.

With preparations nearly finished (see this 

 on the preparatory working group), the first meeting of the INC (INC-1) is set to take place in 

Just as the INC was formed, the UK announced support for the negotiations via Defra and the office of the International Environment Minister. On March 3rd, Lord Zac Goldsmith said:

“This agreement by governments at UNEA is truly historic, and I’m so proud that the UK co-sponsored the proposals and helped get them over the line. In the space of just one human lifetime, we have caused unimaginable damage to the global environment, choking every single part of the global ocean with plastic pollution. And although there is much to be done now to turn it into an ambitious and far-reaching treaty, we can now begin to close this ugly chapter. I am so grateful to UK negotiators for their fantastic work securing agreement this week.”

A view of Tobermory, the most northerly point on the Isle of Mull in the Scottish Inner Hebrides

Defra is the lead Department for the plastics treaty negotiations and will negotiate for the UK in the INC process. Leading this effort is the Defra’s Marine Litter Policy team, headed by Julius Piercy.

Dr. Piercy has led the team since September 2019 and holds a PhD in Marine Biology. He and his team are working closely with OPLN on the UK Plastics Treaty Dialogues, helping represent national stakeholders' views to multilateral environmental negotiations at the highest level.

In conjunction with the five invitation-only sessions, OPLN will also design interactive learning primers with up-to-date curated insights into the treaty process and the evolution of solutions to the plastics crisis, both locally and globally.

News Digest - Plastic news in the UK over the past few weeks:

 launches 2nd Marine Litter Regional Action Plan at the United Nations Ocean conference in Lisbon. UK joined other North-East Atlantic states in an action plan that, among other solutions, tackles litter from rivers, phases out additional single-use plastic items, and reduces microplastic releases from shipping.

Global Plastics Action Partnership (GPAP)

 to be provided over the next three years, taking the total UK contribution to £15 million.

Earlier this month, cross-party MPs called for 

. It is estimated that 100 million such cups are used annually during music festivals and live sporting events, which are ‘rarely collected and processed for recycling’.

More announcements on the UK Plastics Treaty Dialogues are on the way. Check back in with OPLN Media soon for updates. 

An Early Look at the UK Plastics Treaty Dialogues

This is your Ocean Plastics Report for 6/2/2022

Pre-Negotiations for the Global Plastics Treaty Take Place in Dakar, Senegal

 open-ended working group (OEWG) to develop a legally binding instrument on plastic pollution got underway in Dakar, Senegal this week. According to an event organizer, 900 participants split between in person and online formats were reported to be in attendance.

The plan of work for this series of OEWG meetings was to focus on organizational issues for the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) that will handle negotiations. Topics included:

-The timeline of the negotiations and number of meetings

-How non-governmental stakeholders would participate

-Procedural concerns such as consensus, voting, and vetoes

What follows is a day-by-day breakdown of the proceedings.

Left to right: Siaka Coulibaly, Resident Coordinator; Inger Andersen, Executive Director, UNEP; Abdou Karim Sall, Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Senegal; and Leticia Carvalho, UNEP.

On Day 1 of the meeting in Dakar attendees heard general statements touching on the timeline for the INC. When points were raised about how many meetings should take place, many attendees seemed to prefer a 5-meeting schedule.

Attendees also shared their priorities for the process, with many stressing the meaningful inclusion of a wide range of stakeholders, from the private sector to informal waste pickers.

Rokhaya Ndiaye Diop, Basel and Stockholm Conventions Regional Centre in Senegal.

Panels were held on the following topics:

Product and material innovation/product design

 - Archawat Chareonsilp, ETRAN, said regulatory pressure on the private sector will soon be amplified and directed to consumers, who will thus demand solutions to plastic waste. Members of plastic value chain were urged to get ahead of this trend.

 - Jodie Roussell, Nestlé, detailed the company's plans to ensure that none of its packaging ends up as litter or in landfills.

 - Rokhaya Ndiaye Diop, Basel and Stockholm Conventions Regional Centre in Senegal, promoted dual-involvement of the public and private sectors in waste management, alongside government entities.

Read more about May 29th proceedings at IISD/Earth News Bulletin 

Inger Andersen, Executive Director, UNEP, and Abdou Karim Sall, Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Senegal, during a press event.

On Day 2 of the meeting in Dakar, participants began proposing rules of procedure for the future Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee meetings. These rules will form the basis of how the negotiation meetings will operate.

Many of the procedural rules being discussed draw from the template of the INC for the 

, which became effective in August 2017. The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) has produced a comparison table to highlight similarities, differences, and issues of concern between the process followed to adopt the Minamata Convention and the suggested rules of procedures for the negotiations of a plastics treaty, available 

A Multi-Stakeholder meeting for this day was aimed to address concerns related to informal waste pickers/workers. Topics included:

Including informal waste workers in decision-making processes related to plastic pollution

Creating decent work opportunities for waste workers which ensure social protections

Establishing platforms for informal waste workers to engage with policymakers

Read more about May 30th proceedings at IISD/Earth News Bulletin 

The dais at the end of the June 1st meeting 

Robert Bunbury, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade for Canada, reported that the informal working group addressing the rules of procedure for the INC had met into the night on Tuesday, reaching agreement on most of the rules at 1:00 am on Wednesday. (

Note: OPLN will follow up soon with a report on the rules of procedure)

Soon after, it was established that the first Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-1) will take place in Uruguay in November 2022

Finally, delegates further discussed the organization of the multi-stakeholder forum for the exchange of information and activities related to plastic pollution, in order to inform INC-1. They agreed to submit additional comments and suggestions to the Secretariat by the end of June 2022.

The topic of the day's Multi-Stakeholder meeting was 

“Upscaling and redirecting finance, incentives and trade.”

The roles of banks in mitigating planetary challenges through financing solutions

Managing risks and opportunities for stakeholders

How trade policy can effect systems change

The airline industry's push to replace single-use plastics

Read more about the June 1st proceedings at IISD/Earth News Bulletin 

WWF Calls for "Start-Then-Strengthen" Approach to Treaty

, WWF has called for an approach to the global plastics treaty that addresses the most urgent issues and implements measures quickly, while also preparing mechanisms for States and other parties to discuss and further measures. WWF asserts that this method will improve the effectiveness of the treaty over time.

"The OEWG should acknowledge this complexity in their consideration for the INC’s organization of work, especially given the ambition for the INC to complete its work by the end of 2024.

This acknowledgement will help to facilitate discussions on prioritization of negotiation tasks and ensure that the most problematic pollution issues and the most impactful actions are at the top of the agenda. This way, the treaty’s ambition can avoid compromises in the face of both its subject matter’s complexity and the negotiation time frame."

Additionally, WWF's brief lays out three key ideas for promoting participation and compliance by Member States:

1. There should be a process where the treaty enters into force as an instrument of international law when a certain number of States consent to being bound by the treaty through signature and ratification or accession.

 "the entry-into-force threshold will serve as a tipping point: once a certain number of States have joined, it will be increasingly disadvantageous to remain outside the regime.

2. The treaty must provide States with strong incentives to join — meaning 

the cost of joining the treaty and complying with the common standard of action must be lower than the cost of not doing so

. The compliance system will likely be part of the treaty itself, for instance in the form of trade restrictions or certification procedures.

3. Accountability must also be coupled with implementation support. It is essential that a just transition is ensured through both cost-effective control measures and sufficient technical and financial assistance where necessary.

Resources should be distributed in a way that maximizes cost-efficiency and supports developing countries and countries with economies in transition in their efforts to implement their obligations.

First Global Plastics Treaty Talks in Dakar

"We Need a Global Plastics Treaty to Stop an Environmental Disaster - and truly global participation in the process will create more than just a Paris Agreement for plastics"

. What follows is a key point from article that we at OPLN want to be sure to stress:

"Whatever is decided at UNEA 5.2, stakeholders the world over will need a forum to talk to one another and build towards a quick implementation of plans. We should have open, multisectoral dialogues in every country, with recurring sessions while the treaty is being negotiated. The ideas and stakeholder mapping—or finding out what everyone wants out of a treaty—in these talks should feed global negotiations, ultimately informing treaty negotiations in a more dynamic and time-sensitive manner. To that end, OPLN has already begun convening Country Dialogues for the global plastic treaty in Chile, Malaysia, Indonesia, Ghana and the United States.

Consider the

 two billion people in the world, largely in developing nations, who do not have access to waste management collection services

 and are forced to illegally dump or burn their waste. Or the 

15 to 20 million people among them who make their living selling plastic scrap

 that they find on streets, beaches and dumps to secondary recycled plastic markets. Both groups are a vital part of the plastics equation, and their interests must be represented at the negotiating table.

As our initial country-specific forums have taken place, we’ve started to see the chaos of the plastic crisis become just a bit more tangible. Waste-pickers from Accra, Ghana have expressed their concerns to a CEO based in San Francisco. An activist working to protect their fenceline community from the emissions of a refinery next door spoke directly with an executive from the company that owned it. This simply hasn’t happened in previous global treaty processes.

So while the U.N. is gathered in Nairobi, discussing, among other things, what it will take to stem the flow of plastics waste, we want to urge national leaders to support dialogues accessible to everyone, to quickly expand the scope of who is at the negotiating table in this global agreement.

Participation will be the lifeblood of the solution, and an unpopular treaty is sure to stall. Let’s set ourselves up for every holder of every stake to get involved as soon as possible—because there is no time to waste."

Read OPLN's Op-Ed In Scientific American

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Get your bi-weekly deep dive into the world of ocean plastics

This is the first in a series of stakeholder interviews conducted by the OPLN to illustrate the range of stakeholder contributions to our Plastics Treaty Dialogues. We start with the view of an academic in Chile who has spent the last decade studying plastic pollution and advocating for solutions at home and abroad.

For clarity, OPLN divides interviews into three main catergories: (1) experiential statements, (2) positional viewpoints, and (3) learnings and insights.

 holds a postdoc position at Universidad Católica del Norte in Antofagasta. Since 2013, she has studied multiple aspects of the plastic waste crisis as it affects Chile.

Sabine has participated in both of the Chile Country Dialogues on January 13th and March 29th, 2022, held by OPLN and 

This interview with OPLN was conducted in May and June 2022

What were your takeaways from Chile’s Plastics Dialogues?

In the OPLN Dialogues in Chile, the main topics were the expectations and apprehensions of the different actors with respect to the treaty. As a scientist and an academic, my main role is that of an independent researcher and observer. As such, the Dialogues were an important and maybe unique opportunity to get an insight and overview of the wide and complex range of actors involved in either the problem of or the solution to marine plastic pollution. On the one hand, both in the general sessions, but especially in the break-out sessions, I had the opportunity to meet various national citizen´s organizations and NGOs working to end plastic pollution, as well as local actors trying to cope with and reduce the pollution directly affecting them.

On the other hand, I also had the chance to meet lobbyists of the main industries causing plastic pollution, for example, The Coca-Cola Company, which is among the main ones responsible for ocean plastic pollution globally, and to understand how the interference of such high-impact multinational companies can obstruct the efforts of the broad front of local, national and international actors (usually with no or very little financial funds), fighting against plastic pollution.


In my current research project, I’ve been sampling stranded plastics on beaches along the Chilean central and southern continental coast. This was an intense time as we found large amounts of litter which we picked up, counted, sorted, etc.

Chile is one of the pioneers of marine litter research, with studies on a diverse range of the problems´ aspects, including citizens´ perception, distribution, and stranding dynamics, impacts on marine biota and biogeography, among others. Apart from the strictly academic studies, of which there are many as well, we have the “

”, a citizen science organization investigating marine litter with schoolchildren from all over Chile. Thereby we have been able to gain scientific data on research questions from the whole country and even on the oceanic Rapa Nui island. As the same methodology is used in every study site, the data are comparable, which allows us to detect regional/latitudinal patterns and differences.

Moai statues line the coast of Rapa Nui (also Easter Island), Chile

Positional - Rech’s Perspective as a Stakeholder in the Plastic Crisis

I feel the last few years have been exciting in Chile. The problem of plastic pollution is, at its core, not an ecological, but a political problem and is only one of many in Chile´s (as well as the global) ecological crisis. As a legacy of the Chilean dictatorship (1973-1990), Chile follows a radically neo-liberal approach, in which political decisions have traditionally been based on economic considerations only and benefitted a rather small Chilean elite. Decisions on land use and economic activities have traditionally not considered long-term impacts on the local population and the natural resources they depend on and have often been taken against the protest of citizens and against the recommendation of scientists. While in many areas (e.g., water rights, deforestation, salmon farming) no major change seems to have occurred so far, concerning plastic pollution, things seem to be changing.

Plastic debris from one of Rech's field studies, sorted and organized.

Past laws and international agreements have focused on prohibiting the dumping of trash. However, given that globally only a minuscule portion of plastic waste is recycled, almost all plastic litter will eventually be either incinerated or end up in the environment, even if it is disposed of “correctly” and legally. Now, finally, several new laws have been created to solve the problem at (or at least close to) its root. In 2018, a ban on single-use plastic bags entered into force (Law 21.123) and is now followed by legislation prohibiting several single-use plastic items (not a law yet). This law is not only a milestone because of the impact it will have on reducing plastic pollution, but also because it is the product of NGOs´ and citizens´ efforts and is based on hard data. In summary, it is my impression that, concerning the plastic problem, Chilean legislation is increasingly taking into account scientific evidence and citizens’ needs. We have also seen that lately the MMA (Chilean environmental ministry) is actively seeking scientific advice and collaboration, which I see as a very positive sign.

OPLN Question: Do you feel your work and that of your colleagues are being taken into account in negotiaitons at the national and international levels?

At the moment, I do feel that scientific evidence is taken more and more into account when it comes to plastic pollution in Chile. On an international level, I also have the impression that legislation to reduce plastic pollution is increasingly based on evidence, but it's a slow process. From an evidence-based point of view, it is clear that a drastic decrease in plastic production and consumption is needed to start and solve the problem, and current legislation increasingly acknowledges this.

However, there is potent industrial lobbyism from plastic producers and the companies relying on single-use plastics for commercializing their products, which often restrains or slows down any legislative efforts. An example is the ley REP (Law 20.920 on Waste Management, Extended Producer Responsibility and Promotion of Recycling), which was softened and strongly delayed due to industry interference. There is a very comprehensive and interesting paper by my colleagues, reviewing the context, problem, possible solutions, and barriers to these solutions (Urbina et al. 2020: A country's response to tackling plastic pollution in aquatic ecosystems: The Chilean way). If, in addition to our results on the amounts and impacts of plastic pollution, the findings of this paper on the societal and political context would be considered in the process of passing policies and legislation, we could take a big step ahead.

The coastline of Antofagasta, the capital city of one of Chile's northernmost regions.

OPLN Question: The results of a 2021 study you led “suggest that to adequately address this problem [anthropogenic trash in rivers] in Chile, prevention measures should be aimed at the identified local sources, using education, public policies, legislation, and enforcement.” Do you think the global treaty negotiations and the treaty itself can help with any of these measures - education, public policies, legislation, and enforcement? And if so, which specifically?

I think that one of the most important opportunities that the treaty might offer is in the field of legislation. It may offer the chance to regulate the responsibilities of multinational industrial actors causing major plastic pollution on a global level, by coordinated international legislation.

All in all, we have a relatively comprehensive understanding of the litter problem in Chile, not only about its sources, pathways and sinks, but also hard data on amounts, weight, and types of plastics found in the marine environment and on beaches. Such quantitative data and knowledge are crucial as a base for legislation. Many of the results, for example about distribution or stranding dynamics show general processes and phenomena that are valid on a global scale. This means that they are valuable information for international legislation.

OPLN will feature more stakeholder interviews from our global network in the coming weeks.

Interested in contributing an interview or article about solutions to the plastics crisis? Get in touch with 

How a Chilean Academic is Responding to the Plastics Crisis at Home and Abroad

OPLN is proud to announce the UK Plastic Treaty Dialogues, in partnership with the UK Government via the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Over the last year, our Global Plastics Treaty Dialogues have reached thousands of stakeholders in the US, Indonesia, Malaysia, Ghana, Pakistan, and Chile. Now, the UK Plastic Treaty Dialogues will bring together stakeholders from all sectors to dialogue and share ideas on the next steps in ending plastic pollution in the UK and abroad.

The "Giant Plastic Tap" by artist Ben Von Wong illustrated the deluge of plastic pollution into the environment at UNEA 5.2 in Nairobi, Kenya.

In March 2022, the United Nations Environment Assembly voted in a Resolution to start negotiations on a treaty that will address the full lifecycle of plastic, "from source to sea.” Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said the agreement is "the most important international multilateral environmental deal since the Paris climate accord."

With the UK Plastics Treaty Dialogues, we will see a fuller picture of how UK stakeholders plan to participate in this monumental deal.

“The UN Ocean Conference follows the fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly whereby the UK worked with international partners to secure a breakthrough on negotiations to kickstart a new legally binding treaty on plastic pollution. The UK is now partnering with OPLN to draw upon the world-class expertise of UK stakeholders to help shape this ambitious new international treaty through a series of UK Plastics Treaty Dialogues.”

"We’re very excited to now be bringing these catalytic neutral convenings to a focused UK audience. Working closely with the negotiating team at DEFRA, we believe collaboration and dialogue is the only way to ensure this Treaty works for all. Every country and its businesses will be impacted by the treaty - from petrochemicals to consumer goods to fashion to food services. All voices must be heard."

Partnership Was Announced at UN Ocean Conference 2022

The initial announcement of the UK Plastics Treaty Dialogues came in a Monday event at UN Ocean Conference currently underway in Lisbon, Portugal. The panel was titled From Ambition to Action: Ending Plastic Pollution in All Environments, and was hosted by the 

The event encouraged representatives of governments, civil society, academia and business to gather together, make connections, and share views on essential elements for a successful agreement. Toward that end, Rebecca Pow MP, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, announced next steps for these stakeholders.

We call on those who work in UK government, civil society, business, academia, and more to join forces with OPLN and DEFRA in these Dialogues. Kindly forward this message to your UK colleagues, and check back with OPLN media soon for more updates and announcements.

Just Announced: Defra and OPLN Will Hold the UK Plastics Treaty Dialogues 

UNEA delegates are currently on the ground in Nairobi, Kenya 

negotiating over a monumental global plastics treaty

. Prior to the meeting, 185 countries stated support for adopting a new treaty, and representatives are reporting a positive attitude and "

In recent days, many of the negotiators have had their attention captured by a 40-foot tall tap spewing all forms of plastic matter onto the grounds of the United Nations' building.

The exhibition is essentially unmissable to participants in the UNEA 5.2 talks. Delegates walk directly by it everyday on the way to work - a stark reminder of the gravity of the ocean plastics issue and the importance of coming to a global agreement on as soon as possible.

The artist behind the chaotic image is Benjamin Von Wong (

). Throughout his work over the past few years, Von Wong has worked with plastic to make unforgettable statements about the crisis at hand. His vocation has taken him all over the world, and has finally landed him in Nairobi with one of his biggest installments yet. The #GiantPlasticTap!

Von Wong has invited OPLN's NGO members to use images of the exhibit for free.

Andrés Del Castillo, a Senior Attorney for Plastic Pollution at UNEA 5.2, had this to say about The Tap:

 last until 3:15 am. A really active participation from member States...

Then the moon of Nairobi was waiting for us."

While the image is worth a thousand words, the background of the Giant Plastic Tap is a great story in itself. Von Wong is working with the 

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