12 - Plastic treaty recommendations to transform the Global South

As policymakers from more than 170 nations come together for the third session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (#INC3) in November, intense discussions are underway about which mandates will be in a legally binding global plastics treaty. In this new TOMRA Talks Circular Podcast episode, environmental policy advocates Dominic Hogg, Founder and Director of Equanimator Ltd, and Jacob Rognhaug, Vice President of Public Affairs System Design at TOMRA, share their top takeaways for tackling plastic pollution. Covering a range of topics, including how mandatory extended producer responsibility can help cover the costs of waste collection and plastic recycling, giving countries in the global south a unique opportunity to leapfrog some of the world’s leading nations in circularity 

Listen to the episode below, or use your favourite platform (Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts)

Show Notes

• Three key elements needed in the Plastics Treaty [2:38]
• Feasibility of collecting plastic waste worldwide [6:17]
• Benefits of including the informal waste sector [9:55]
• The need for a holistic approach to waste management [13:49]
• Banning non-recyclable plastics [15:57]
• Infrastructure required to implement treaty [17:27]
• Timeframe for global systems change [20:03]
• Financing global waste management – who pays? [22:33]
• Why deposit return systems are a leapfrog opportunity [22:33]
• Targets and minimum thresholds for success [29:39]
• An enormous opportunity for the Global South [32:18]

 

To read a draft proposal of control measures prepared by Dominic Hogg of Equanimator Ltd, visit: tinyurl.com/4xtujnm8

 

Explore TOMRA’s 10 policy recommendations for curbing plastic pollution here: www.tomra.com/about-tomra/circular-economy/un-treaty-on-plastic-pollution

 

Transcript

 

Mithu: Hello and welcome to TOMRA Talks Circular. I'm your host, Mithu Mohren. Today we have an exciting and important discussion ahead of us. We'll be diving into the world of plastic waste and exploring the potential of the international legally binding instrument, more commonly known as the UNEP Plastics Treaty.

 

This treaty has the potential to reshape the way we approach plastic pollution on a global scale. And perhaps more importantly, in regions that are affected the most, like the Global South. But before we get started, let's set the stage. Over and over again, we've seen that voluntary requirements, bans on specific items, or fees and penalties as standalone measurements simply have not proven to lead to results that make a dent in the challenges today. Much less to creating a long-lasting improvement. What is needed is a holistic approach with collaboration across the globe and industries.

 

I'm joined by two distinguished guests today. First, we have Dominic Hogg, Founder and Director at the of Equanimator Ltd, who has over the last 30 years’ experience researching, campaigning and consulting on environmental issues. He has also recently developed a draft on the sorts of control measures that might help to achieve the objectives that we will be discussing today. You can find a link to the draft in the show notes of this podcast. It's an honor to have him on the program. Along with Dom, joining us today is someone you already know, Jacob Rognhaug, Vice President of Public Affairs System Design at TOMRA.

 

Both gentlemen are actively involved in the UNEP Plastics Treaty process working towards meaningful change. Gentlemen, welcome to the program.

 

Dominic: Thank you.

 

Jacob: Thank you.

 

Mithu: Now let's dive right in. My understanding is that TOMRA has developed ten recommendations for addressing the plastic waste crisis. These are real solutions that, given the right framework, could be put into place pretty quickly. For the sake of time. This episode, we're not going to go through all ten, but can I ask you to summarize those ten recommendations into three?

 

Jacob: Yes, I'm happy to do so. But first of all, let me just emphasize that we have to acknowledge that we have a significant problem in our hands when it comes to plastic waste and plastic pollution. And despite increasing efforts over the last decades, we see that progress is happening for far too slow. The good news is that there are really effective systems operating out there. And we at TOMRA, we have partnered up with Eunomia, a UK-based consultancy, to help us to map out what are the best performing systems out there, what do they look like and what is the best combination of these systems? And further, what are the policies that have motivated and enabled the implementation of these systems? And when we look at the system, we see they have one thing in common: They are all based on the robust legislative and policy framework.

 

It's very clear for us that voluntary systems are not enough. And that's why we see the UN Treaty on Plastic Pollution as a unique opportunity to accelerate implementation of enabling policies. You asked about our three recommendations, and they are all based on an extract of what we have seen the best performing systems doing today. This is not our invention – it is simply a summary of what has proven to drive implementation of effective systems earlier.

So, if I'm going to summarize our ten elements into three main ones, it will be the following: Provide access to general waste management for all citizens. Strong municipal waste management is what every region has in place that are really addressed littering effectively. Secondly, is to establish legislative and well-designed extended producer responsibility. This is contributing to finance … it's contributing also to the design for circularity. It's contributing to make effective design – in other words, eliminate and reduce skip unnecessary packaging. And it's also effective to create a market by setting requirements for recycled content in new products, helping to build up recycling capacity for this.

 

When we have these two elements, one call for strong municipal collection and the producer responsibility enabling the circular part of the collected waste. Then what we need is well-defined, specific, and ambitious recycling targets. This serves to align and nurse collaboration between the efforts done on municipal level and on private level.

 

Mithu: Okay. Thanks, Jacob, for summarizing those into three points. I know that's not the easiest thing to do. Now, I'd like to take a moment and just look at these individually. So, Dom, if we could start with you. The first recommendation is to establish access to waste collection for all – globally for all citizens. Do you see this as feasible? Especially in the developing countries.

 

Dominic: Well, Mithu, I'd say more than it having to be feasible. We absolutely need to do this. It clearly is feasible because we know that we can provide that collection service everywhere. But in the context of the international legally binding instrument, where we're trying to address the problem of plastic pollution, there's been a lot of discussion about whether certain types of plastics or certain packaging formats might be problematic.

 

The problem is that all plastics are problematic if you don't have waste collection. So, unless we're going to completely ban all plastic production and consumption, then we actually have to do this. And virtually all studies that I've seen, and I've read most of them, the source of the problem – plastic pollution – agree that mismanagement of plastic waste is a key part of the problem. And so, unless we provide everyone with decent collection systems that are convenient for residents to use, then we are not going to solve the problem.

 

We need, of course, to tailor those collection systems to fit those local conditions. But we probably want to see separate collections so that rather than just keeping plastics out of the oceans and rivers, that we actually capture those plastics in a way that we can make use of them. We need to develop the collection services, and if we're going to collect plastic waste, then it's going to be important also if we look at climate change more generally to provide collection services, covering probably the other wastes as well. Because it's not going to be desperately efficient to go to each to provide a decent collection service for ourselves that focuses ONLY on plastic, when we could also be collecting those other wastes that also need to be managed.

 

As we do that, we should be working with the informal waste collectors who were probably, as far as we can see, carrying out the vast majority of the recycling of plastic that currently happens in the Global South. And it would be a rather disappointing and potentially problematic to be providing services that effectively exclude those people and thereby take away from the main source of their livelihoods. So, it's an opportunity to provide them with better status, better working conditions, and a form of employment that is incredibly valued and useful as a means of keeping plastics waste out of the rivers and the oceans.

 

Mithu: Very inspirational and aspirational, including the informal sector into such systems. Have you had some experience on this? Or how would you propose just a couple of examples maybe of how you could or you could envision this.

 

Dominic: There are examples of how the informal sector collectors have been integrated into formal waste management systems around the world. In Latin America, in India, in Africa, and in a range of different countries. We need to look at how to use the best approaches adapted for those local situations. The important thing I think is that we don't exclude those people from the, if you like, the formalization of waste collection service. It's very easy for international donors or for municipalities, for example, to procure services and in doing so, to effectively exclude informal actors from participating in those tenders. What we need to do is make sure we're working to include them and to encourage their inclusion. To make use of their valued expertise and knowledge so that they are part of the future system not eliminated from it.

 

Mithu: It sounds like that's doable. From what I understand from you, Jacob, is there anything you'd like to add?

 

Jacob: Maybe I can add one opportunity here. Very often in areas where you have informal sector, they are only targeting the most valuable material streams. And some of them are the plastic bottles. Some regions, the informal sector, have a really high capture rate. You can see majority of the plastics, even that are thrown away in nature are being collected by informal pictures and returned into collection points where they are being recycled. These systems are doing a good job today.

 

One opportunity that a deposit return system, which we know is extremely effective in many of the developing countries – well-designed system – it one thing in common. It provides a collection rate more than 90%. We think that 20% to 25% of the littered items that are found on beaches during beach cleanups around the world are actually related to beverage containers. This is really an effective instrument to address marine litter as well.

 

By adding a deposit return system, tailored for the local environment, on top of the practices that happened today, this can represent a great opportunity to bring more transparency, a safeguard, the recycling process, enable closed-loop recycling. At the same time uplift and the livelihood of these people. And we see a great increasing interest from several countries that have informal sector workers today. Uruguay has announced introduction of as their flagship step in introducing extended producer responsibility. South Africa has interest and many countries in Asia also have interest looking at DRS to uplift the informal sector.

 

Mithu: Actually, the goal is to reduce the amount of beach cleanups that we're having to do worldwide with an effective treaty or binding instrument. So, Dom, let's say we've collected all of this waste through a holisitc process. What should happen next in a holistic waste management approach?

 

Dominic: Well, first of all, I just want to reflect on what Jacob has just said, because the treaty is not going to be just about what do you do with all of the wastes that currently are being generated and are being consumed by people. But I think it's quite clear that part of what the treaty has to do is to question whether certain packaging formats, certain products, really need to be on the market in the first place. Because they might not be very well designed – and I think that, of course, might lead to some reduction in the amount of plastics being used. It could be simply that the plastics that have been designed in a different way.

 

The net effect of that, though, is that more of the stuff that is collected is going to be suitable for some form of recycling. So as long as we can collect it, intercept it … before it goes into rivers and oceans … then we should be able to do something useful with it. And that relies, of course, on us being takings and other measures that reduce the amount of stuff that's being put on the market. That simply is as a high likelihood of finding its way into rivers and oceans. But it's not just about plastics. There are other materials that, as I said earlier.

If we're going to be collecting all of the different ways streams, we're going to have to deal with them all. And that means likely in some of the countries we're talking about – stabilizing the organic fraction prior to either making use of it or to landfilling it, so that it doesn't produce methane when it's sent there. But also maximizing the recycling of all the other materials that we can capture. And sort it for recycling to find suitable markets for it. If we can do that, we'll generate job opportunities and we'll also reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the process.

 

Mithu: So, if I if I understood what you were saying, basically we need to get good design-for-recycling or excellent design-for-recycling. And if it can't be recycled, it has no business being on the market. Is that what I understood?

 

Dominic: I think that's where we should be heading. There are items that are really single-use – clearly intended for people to discard. One of the merits of those items is that they can be discarded easily because they're single use. I think also those should be taken off the market just as it's happened in a range of countries with some plastic bags, single-use food containers and so forth. This is already happening. It's happened as a sort of patchwork of measures across the nations of the world and I think this is an opportunity to really clarify that there are certain items that really don't belong. But if we can't capture them, collect them at a high level of efficiency, and recycle them, let’s keep them out.

 

Mithu: I think that's, again, very aspirational. I agree we do need to get there. So, Jacob, Dom has said if it's not recyclable, it has no business being on the market. So, let's assume everything is recyclable that's on the market. What sort of infrastructure do we need in place to actually recycle?

 

Jacob: The first step will be actually now, when all the waste is collected, you will also find plastic in there. You can find plastic in different streams. If you have a source separation in place where plastic is collected separate from all the waste, this need further sorting. But we also know that most of the source separation schemes, they are not capturing all the waste. Our experience shows that you will find a high amount of plastic recyclable plastic in what is very often considered and talked about as residual waste. In fact, through the studies we have done, we find a lot of valuable recyclable plastic in these streams in addition to other materials, sometimes paper, sometimes metal, and other recyclables.

 

By sorting the residual waste before it goes to final disposal at landfills or maybe waste-to-energy, we can maximize the recycling rate. And this sorting, as well as sorting of the source-separated plastic, doesn't need to happen at municipality level. And since we're talking about the developing world, maybe with less competence/capacity to administrate advanced sorting on a local municipal level – this mixed plastic can be recovered aided directly from the household or through simplified sorting plants that recover only mixed plastic from the residual waste. This (plastic waste) is being sent to centralized sorting plants or centralized grading facilities. By having these centralized entities, you will be able to concentrate high volumes … and this is really important when it comes to building competence and justifying investment.

 

Providing a high volume, stable quality to the recyclers – because if there is one thing we know, a volume is very important. And stable qualities with reliable supply is really what can justify investment in high-end recycling plants – where any kind of plastic independent of food, separate, collected or sorted out from mixed waste can be turned into virgin-like quality for wide use of applications, replacing virgin material.

 

Mithu: Replacing our reliance on fossil fuels, which is which is the goal here. Okay, both of you have talked about very aspirational and inspirational transitions and transformation, but it seems like this is going to take years, if not decades, to establish worldwide. Right?

 

Dominic: Well, I don't think so, Mithu. I think this can be done within a decade. That sounds ambitious, but, you know, some people who've looked at this, they've sort of said, well, okay, what happens if we have to do this across the whole world? Then that means we've got to cover so many 100,000 people per year. But hang on, you don't have to do this sequentially. We could start everywhere tomorrow if we were really ready for it.

 

One of the constraints there might be the supply of all the equipment we might need, but in principle, everyone can do this in parallel. Doesn't have to be sort of done … okay, we'll do that part of the world, then that part of the world, then that part of the world. That's not how this has to be done. And there are very few places in the world who set out to do this and install a decent waste management service. You can look at all the major cities of the world, and where it takes you no more than something of the order of five years. And that's actually quite a long time in in in my experience. So why can't we do this within a decade?

 

If we say that we're not going to do it, we're not going to solve the problem. And the earlier we get on with it and start sorting it out. The smaller will be the quantity of plastics overall that goes into the rivers and the oceans over time. It's that simple. So, we have to get on with it. Let's get on with it. Not pretend it's too difficult because if you pretend it's too difficult, we'll always think it is. It isn't too difficult. It's quite possible. Just because it's not done so far doesn't mean we can't do it in the future

 

Mithu: You've convinced me, Dom. I'm sure you're convincing others out there, too. And let's face it, time is not something we have a lot to spare. In fact, we're quite late in the whole process as is it. So let's turn into the second point. EPR or extended producer responsibility. Financing is a critical aspect of this transformation. If we're going to get done within the decade, as you've said Dom, how can these systems, even in low cost countries, be financed?.

 

Dominic: The financing is a critical obstacle as to why this hasn't already happened. Because if you're a local politician who's charged with introducing a new waste management service, where do you get the money? And one of the ways you get money is having local taxes charges on your residents. Well, if you're an elected politician, that's an interesting place to be going. You don't necessarily want to be saying to your residents, oh, by the way, everybody, I'm going to lock up the fees and charges need to recover from you in order to pay for the service.

 

So extended producer responsibility as it's being discussed in the context of the treaty, feels to me often that it's very sort of EU-oriented. I want to pare this back to the real basics: What is it that we're extending the responsibility of producers to do? It's funding. It's getting the producers to pay. That's the bit of their responsibility that we want to extend.

 

And we need to think in a new way about this because in countries such as those in the European Union, we've had waste collection systems, we've had waste collection systems in the country where I live in United Kingdom for ages, for years and years and years. And they came in as a means to collect the dust from the solid fuels that people used to burn. We used to have the dust bin. That's why it was called the dust bin because we were mainly collecting clinker from solid fuels. Now we started then to ask producers to recover some of the costs as we started to do recycling, and they covered the cost of recycling.

 

Mithu: And this is what we mean by producer pays, right?

 

Dominic: Exactly. They start to pay for the management of the stuff that they place on the market and that people like yourself, myself, we consume. And so, if we look at it in this way, producer responsibility becomes a sort of social license to operate or to sell these things. If you have to sell these things, make sure you get stuff back and manage it responsibly at the end of its life and pay for it. And if you do that, whatever you, the producer, are paying to do that, probably to the extent that you can, you might pass that on to the consumers. So, the consumers are probably paying too.

 

If you've got this polluter pays principle translated into producer pays, and the consumer pays also. And one of the reasons why this is interesting is it sort of takes some of that local politics away from the discussion around who's going to pay for the waste management service. So, the more you can get covered by producers in terms of the funding of the waste collection and management service, then arguably the less you have to get from other sources and the less you're going to have to ask for from your local residents. You start to sort of reduce the contentiousness of the politics that you're in.

 

We're talking about producer responsibility at the global level. We should probably think principally about producers being responsible for funding. And at one level, I don't really mind exactly how that funding comes into, probably, central government. It could be in the form of levies, could be in the form of taxes. It could be in various different ways. It could be also in the more traditional European-type model, where a producer responsibility organization is set up and it takes in the money from the producers to fund the waste management service. But fundamentally, we need, I think, producers to pay. We need them to pay for a broad range of the services that are required to do the cleaning up of what it is that they're basically put on the market. Including litter cleanups, including cleaning the streets. To the extent that their products are involved in that, they should pay.

 

Mithu: So there are different models of EPR that could be put into place.

 

Dominic: Yeah, I don't think with 200 countries in the discussions that we're having at the UN level, 200 or so countries. I can't imagine that all of them have a sort of political and economic system that will necessarily accommodate a form of extended producer responsibility system that looks like whatever we've managed to develop in the EU, for example. In any case, we've had for a long time many different systems within the EU or which have reflected those different member states characteristics.

 

Jacob: Yeah, so if I could add to that with one example. I mentioned earlier deposit return systems, and these are very often implemented as EPR schemes. They are very particular specific form of extended producer responsibility. What makes them kind of unique is that they are proven to be effective – setting up separate and independent value chains for collection and recycling of the material … they address beverage containers.

For many developing worlds, for instance, implementing EPR schemes in combination with strengthening the municipal solid waste management could take some time and be rather complicated. So, as a potential low-hanging fruit, starting EPR implementation with a deposit system – a full cost EPR scheme where the producer is responsible for everything from collection, setting up the infrastructure through recycling – can be an opportunity. Do it in parallel, while you also are strengthening municipal solid waste management and implementing a general EPR. But doing this as a separate item can also allow you to bring awareness, increase education level, uplift informal sector while you are also working on the municipal side of it.

 

Mithu: Thank you, Jacob. We've gotten through the first two recommendations. I'd like to turn our attention towards the last one now, the third one, and that's the ambitious and specific collection for recycling targets. Can you explain the significance of these targets?

 

Jacob: In our 10th recommendation, we have been very specific on targets. We have said 90% separate collection of beverage containers. We have said 55% or more recycling rate targets. The reason why we have picked this is because that's the threshold we have seen that has motivated implementation or high-performing systems.

We recognize that it will take some time to reach these numbers. So independent of the starting point for every country, you know, you can have different timelines, but we see it as very important to actually know where you're heading – because then you can start to build system actually, step-by-step, capable of meeting these levels. If you do the opposite, then you start with a low target. You might start implementing systems that are capable of meeting that target but are not capable of being scaled up to higher performance.

 

If we in Europe knew what we know today or where the performance level needed to be, I think waste management would look very different. But we started to build this over 30 years now and a lot of the, let's say the roads, directions and the efforts we have made have turned out to not comply with high performance systems that really address littering and drives a circular economy.

 

Another thing is the well-defined targets. We know that the industry has a tendency to find loopholes here. It needs to be very specific how to measure it, so it drives real performance and not wasting time on achieving the targets by, you know, playing around with numbers and so on. Another element is, of course, when you have a target set in the future, this is what the industry really needs – predictability. Predictability to drive innovation, invest in innovation, spend the time to develop new systems, improve systems, but also to drive investment. Targets that are specific, well-defined, auditable targets are really a key here to align all the players and to give it the momentum we need.

 

Mithu: Okay, in summary: Taking inspiration from existing – and I want to underline the word existing – high performance systems could pave the way for an internationally legal binding instrument on plastic waste. Based on a discussion today, it seems like this approach could actually be an express route for countries with limited or no existing systems to catch up, and even surpass countries that have been working on this for decades.

 

One final question to Dominic and Jacob. Do you see the possibility for a country with one of the lowest circular performance levels for plastic today to actually outperform a country like, let's say, Germany, which has been at this for 30 years? Dom, I'm going back to what you said earlier, within the next ten years.

 

Jacob: From my side, it’s a clear yes.

 

Mithu: Okay.

 

Dominic: I think it's a yes. I think we've learnt enough – not just about what to do, but also about what not to do. And that's at least as important in understanding how best to do this. Ten years is a decent time frame for people to completely transform what they are doing.

 

We know that if you are looking at the level of a municipality, you can you can achieve these changes in actually quite a small time. If it's a small municipality, tends to take a little longer. If it's a bigger municipality, if it's a whole nation, it can take longer still. Ten years is an hour and think that that is entirely possible.

 

Mithu: Okay. Well, that sounds pretty unanimous. Two guests, two yeses. Guys, a really very insightful conversation today. I know you're both very busy. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you. A look ahead to INC-3 in Nairobi mid-November. Good luck with the negotiation. It sounds to me like you have a legitimate plan. Thanks again for your time today.

 

Dominic: Thank you, Mithu. And to everyone listening. Let's hope that the instrument proceeds in a positive way.

Jacob: And from my side also. Thank you very much for this opportunity and for a very inspiring conversation with you, Dominic. I encourage every listener to really embrace and support this treaty because we have a unique chance to make a difference on a very serious problem – plastic and plastic pollution. Thank you.

 

Mithu: And thank you as well for me to our listeners. Until next time, stay inspired, stay informed and keep making a positive impact on the world. See you next time.

 

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