Busan, South Korea — The Society of Plastics Engineers, with 22,000 members and chapters in 84 countries around the world, is looking for its lane in the plastics treaty talks.
The Danbury, Conn.-based technical society normally steers clear of government policy debates, but it recently sent its first delegation to the talks, at the fifth negotiating round in late 2024 in South Korea.
A big reason for getting involved at this late stage: It wants to present itself and its thousands of engineers as a global technical resource as the treaty starts to move into the implementation phase.
Conor Carlin, SPE's immediate past president, attended the talks in Busan and said it wants the group to be seen as a "neutral broker or a platform that going to allow people to bridge discussions from policy makers to the technical experts."
"There's been a lot of good opportunities to talk to people and let them know what type of organization we are," Carlin said. "We're not an NGO [nongovernmental organization], we're not a lobbying firm. We're threading the needle between those two groups, which a lot of people seem to like."
In an interview at the Busan convention center, amid a beehive of a few thousand diplomats, environmentalists and industry reps, Carlin and CEO Patrick Farrey said they see SPE bridging a gap between the policy that emerges from the treaty and what companies can do to implement that.
For example, both pointed to SPE's conference on finding alternatives to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in plastics, held for the second time in 2024, as an example of the kind of technical discussions SPE could facilitate.
Farrey said that with SPE's chapters and members located around the world, it can contribute perspectives from both developed and developing countries.
"There's a lot of discussions about the impact on developed vs. developing countries," Farrey said. "SPE stakeholders come from both. Activities that will be impacted regionally are really kind of all across the board for us."
He said SPE chapters in Australia and India, for example, have built close links with government policy makers in those two diverse countries.
Carlin said the technical papers at SPE's many events, like its Antec annual technical conference, could be mined for ideas for implementing the treaty.
"There may be some paper that's presented at Antec today that may seem marginal, but could become very important in the future, because the researchers are working on these areas that may not see the light of day until something changes in the legislative or policy environment," Carlin said.
There are other science-oriented groups participating in the talks, including the Scientists' Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, a group made up largely of university researchers that also positions itself as bringing scientific analysis into the treaty process.
That coalition has taken a very public role at the talks, issuing policy briefs in areas like reducing plastic production, simplifying the chemicals used in polymers and advocating sustainable design principles, as well as offering a sort of scientific help desk to diplomats.
Farrey said that SPE sees its role differently than the scientists' coalition.
"As best we can tell, their work tends to be on the medical or the human impact side of it," he said, noting that SPE wants its role to "be around the science and technology of plastics and polymers, performance, material development and technology exchange."
Carlin said SPE is looking at organizing different internal groups for its members to contribute to the treaty, and is eyeing future treaty meetings like the agreement's Conference of Parties, which would happen after enough countries ratify the agreement. The COPs, as they are called, can be more implementation oriented.
"That would suit our mission quite well, to be able to set up to convene discussions on that, especially in the capacity building on the science and polymer side of it," Carlin said.
Farrey said SPE does not see itself pushing policy campaigns or funding advertising efforts, like those from NGOs and industry groups that have popped up at the last two negotiating sessions.
"I think sometimes people confuse our mission with the mission of the other plastics organizations that are running ads and doing campaigns," Farrey said.
SPE's three-person delegation also included Ivan Dario Lopez Gomez, its technical director.
Before coming to the Busan round, which was supposed to be the fifth and final meeting of the treaty's intergovernmental negotiating committee, Farrey said SPE questioned whether it was getting involved too late.
But with the talks hitting a roadblock in Busan and countries agreeing to add another negotiating session to keep talking, SPE said it thinks its timing is good.
"We're on the launching pad for our work here, coming into this at INC 5," Farrey said. "Initially it felt late to us, but I think now is probably the right time. … I think the future, the opportunities, are still ahead of us, not behind us."