Emmanuel Macron calls for “ending an unsustainable model”

“If we do nothing, the generation of plastic waste will triple again by 2060. Plastic pollution is therefore a time bomb as well as a scourge already present.” Emmanuel Macron called, Monday, May 29, to “put an end to a globalized and unsustainable model” production and consumption of plastic, for the resumption in Paris of negotiations on a future global treaty against this major pollution. The French president spoke in a video message to representatives of 175 nations gathered at UNESCO headquarters in Paris until Friday.

🔴 LIVE 🗣 “In terms of climate change, the plastics sector will emit 56 billion CO2 per year by 2050” says @EmmanuelMacron at a global summit against plastic pollution.

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According to the Head of State, “we must definitively put an end to a globalized and unsustainable model which consists of producing plastic in China or in OECD countries (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, editor’s note), and then export it in the form of waste to developing countries, which are less well equipped with waste treatment systems”.

“Reduce the production of new plastics”

“The primary objective must be to reduce the production of new plastics and to ban the most polluting products – such as single-use plastics – and the most dangerous to health as soon as possible”, details Emmanuel Macron. While “Only 15% of plastic is recycled globally”, “100% of plastics placed on the market must tomorrow be fully recyclable”he continues, pleading like fifty other countries for an end to plastic pollution by 2040.

The negotiations are delicate between countries with divergent ambitions, to try to reach a historic agreement covering the entire life cycle of plastic. The President of the Republic recalls “the objective of arriving at an agreed text by the end of 2024, one year before the United Nations conference on the Ocean in Nice”.