January/February 2025 issue: free to read for Sustainable Plastics' subscribers!
Welcome to our first issue of Sustainable Plastics in 2025 – and before anything else, I’d first like to say a big ‘thank you’ to our readers for sticking with us. It’s been just five short years since we launched the magazine - but what a journey!
Our aim was to create a new platform that would tap into the challenges and transitions facing the industry, tracking the technological advancements and the regulatory demands shaping the changes and progress being made. And, despite a worldwide pandemic breaking out almost immediately after we published our first issue, creating havoc of all our mapped-out editorial, marketing and growth plans, that is exactly what we’ve done. And we intend to continue doing so.
As this year gears up, all signs point to its being an eventful one. A misbehaving climate, international trade and geopolitical upheaval, disruptive AI technology that took the world completely off-guard dominated the news in the first month of the year. January also brought the news that Earth’s average temperature had climbed to more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels for the first time in 2024. Climate scientists warn that exceeding a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees will have significant implications for nature, society and the economy. It currently appears we are well on course to experience these for ourselves.
But, to get back to plastics: what does 2025 have in store for the industry? At the very least, more treaty discussions. The best efforts of some 175 countries around the world notwithstanding, last year’s INC-5 negotiations ended without agreement being reached on the text of a Global Plastics Treaty, with the delegates agreeing to suspend the session and reconvene in 2025.
The main stumbling block? Although much of the world is on the same page when it comes to addressing plastic waste in the treaty, disagreement about whether or not it should include caps on plastic production is fierce. For a group of oil and gas-producing countries, any talk of curbing production was virtually non-negotiable. Such limits, they argued, exceed the mandate of the treaty – despite the wording of the UNEA resolution adopted in 2022 stressing the importance of implementing policy measures covering the whole lifecycle of plastics - and the need to include provisions in the treaty to promote the sustainable production of plastics. And because consensus is how the UN prefers to make decisions, and no consensus was reached, INC-5 ended inconclusively.
It was truly, in every sense, a crude powerplay.
According to Socrates, the secret of change is to focus all energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. To do so, commitment, compromise, creativity and common sense are all essential. Yet without all stakeholders mustering the willingness and courage to own the problem, true change – and a solution to plastic pollution - will remain elusive.
January/February 2025 issue: free to read for Sustainable Plastics' subscribers!