This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Plastic is a wonder material that has molded itself to fit a wide variety of applications. But it comes with a host of drawbacks that aren't fully considered.
That's why the United Nations has convened to hammer out a treaty to address plastic pollution. As negotiations continue, scientists in the United States and China joined forces to urge delegates to introduce a mandatory measurement and reporting component, similar to protocols for other internationally regulated pollutants. The details appear in the journal Science and will inform a workshop in Geneva, Switzerland, on Sept. 16–17.
Environment Assembly convened a committee to begin negotiating a treaty to end plastic pollution. This process offers an opportunity to establish standards for measuring and reporting plastic production, use, disposal and pollution. Scientists at UC Santa Barbara and Tsinghua University in Beijing collaborated to highlight this fact.
"The biggest worry would be that the first version of the Global Plastics Treaty has no reporting requirements," said co-author Roland Geyer, professor of industrial ecology at UCSB's Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. Geyer's co-authors echoed this sentiment. "As the negotiations progressed, we became increasingly concerned that data and reporting were not receiving the attention we felt they deserved," said lead author Quanyin Tan, an assistant professor at the School of Environment, Tsinghua University.
"That concern became an important motivation for this paper." The reporting program the authors lay out would entail measuring the kinds of plastics produced, how they're traded and how they're recycled or disposed of. This, in turn, requires countries to standardize labeling and establish measurement practices and repositories. "We're not describing something new," said UCSB professor Douglas McCauley, "but we realize it's a bold idea to ask all countries in the world to report detailed data on plastics from cradle to grave." Bold, but not radical.
Society has already developed international protocols for a variety of other products, chemicals, materials and consumer goods: These treaties have tackled some of the world's most pernicious environmental problems. Their successes have hinged on collecting data on the problem and tracking change. "We now need to break ground on a system for plastics," said McCauley, professor of ecology, evolution and marine biology.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
