Negotiators gathered in Busan, South Korea, on Monday in a final push to create a treaty to address the global crisis of plastic pollution.
It’s the fifth time the world’s nations convene to craft a legally binding plastic pollution accord. In addition to the national delegations, representatives from the plastics industry, scientists and environmentalists have come to shape how the world tackles the surging problem.
The planet is ” choking on plastic, ” according to the United Nations. It’s polluting lakes, rivers, oceans and people’s bodies.
“Don’t kick the can, or the plastic bottle, down the road,” UN Environment Programme Executive Director Inger Andersen said in a message aimed at negotiators.
This “is an issue about the intergenerational justice of those generations that will come after us and be living with all this garbage. We can solve this and we must get it done in Busan,” she said in an interview.
The previous four global meetings have revealed sharp differences in goals and interests. This week’s talks go through Saturday.
Led by Norway and Rwanda, 66 countries plus the European Union say they want to address the total amount of plastic on Earth by controlling design, production, consumption and where plastic ends up. The delegation from the hard-hit island nation of Micronesia helped lead an effort to call more attention to “unsustainable” plastic production, called the Bridge to Busan. Island nations are grappling with vast amounts of other countries’ plastic waste washing up on their shores.
“We think it’s the heart of the treaty, to go upstream and to get to the problem at its source,” said Dennis Clare, legal adviser and plastics negotiator for Micronesia. “There’s a tagline, ‘You can’t recycle your way out of this problem.’”
Some plastic-producing and oil and gas countries, including Saudi Arabia, disagree. They vigorously oppose any limits on plastic manufacturing. Most plastic is made from fossil fuels. Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest exporter of primary polypropylene, a common type of plastic, accounting for an estimated 17 percent of exports last year, according to the Plastics Industry Association.
China, the United States and Germany led the global plastics trade by exports and imports in 2023, the association said.
The plastics industry has been advocating for a treaty focused on redesigning plastic products, recycling and reuse, sometimes referred to as “circularity.” Chris Jahn, International Council of Chemical Associations secretariat, said negotiators should focus on ending plastic waste in the environment, not plastic production, to get a deal. Many countries won’t join a treaty if it includes production caps, he said.
To continue to progress and grow as a global economy, there are going to be more plastics, Jahn added.
“So we should strive then to keep those plastics in the economy and out of the environment,” Jahn said.
The United States delegation at first said countries should develop their own plans to act, a position viewed as favoring industry. It changed its position this summer, saying the US is open to considering global targets for reductions in plastic production.
Environmental groups accused the US of backtracking as negotiations approached.
Center for Coalfield Justice executive director Sarah Martik said the United States is standing on the sidelines rather than leading, putting “their thumb on the scale throughout the entirety of the negotiations.” She hopes this does not derail other countries’ ambition.
The US Environmental Protection Agency released a national strategy to prevent plastic pollution Thursday, but Martik said she thinks too many of the measures are voluntary to make a difference.
Democratic US Sen. Jeff Merkley, of Oregon, said it’s a mistake for the United States to settle for the lowest common denominator proposals, just to get some kind of agreement.
Luis Vayas Valdivieso, the committee chair from Ecuador, recently proposed text for sections where he thinks the delegations could agree.
The production and use of plastics globally is set to reach 736 million tons by 2040, up 70 percent from 2020, without policy changes, according to the intergovernmental Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Research published in Science this month found it is still possible to nearly end plastic pollution. The policies that make the most difference are: mandating new products be made with 40 percent post-consumer recycled plastic; limiting new plastic production to 2020 levels; investing significantly in plastic waste management, such as landfills and waste collection services and implementing a small fee on plastic packaging.
The treaty is the only way to solve plastic pollution at this scale, said Douglas McCauley, professor at UC Santa Barbara and UC Berkeley. McCauley co-led the research.
Margaret Spring, chief conservation and science officer for Monterey Bay Aquarium, said plastic pollution used to be considered largely a waste problem. Now it is widely viewed as an existential crisis that must be addressed, said Spring, who represents the International Science Council at the negotiations.
“I’ve never seen people’s understanding of this issue move as fast, given how complex the topic is,” she said. “It gives me hope that we can actually start moving the dial.”
 

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay: The presidential candidate of the conservative coalition that has governed Uruguay for the past five years conceded defeat on Sunday after a tight runoff election, as the South American nation joined others around the world in rebuking the incumbent party in a year of landmark elections.
Even as the vote count continued, Álvaro Delgado, the center-right government’s candidate, told supporters at his campaign headquarters in the capital of Montevideo that “with sadness, but without guilt, we can congratulate the winner,” referring to left-wing challenger Yamandú Orsi.
Fireworks erupted over the stage where Orsi, 57, a working-class former history teacher and two-time mayor from Uruguay’s center-left coalition known as the Broad Front, claimed victory as crowds flocked to greet him.
“The country of liberty, equality and fraternity has triumphed once again,” he said, vowing to unite the nation of 3.4 million people after such a tight vote.
“Let’s understand that there is another part of our country who have different feelings today,” he said. “These people will also have to help build a better country. We need them too.”
With more than 91 percent of the votes counted, Orsi had 49.56 percent support compared to Delgado’s 46.17 percent in an election in which nearly 90 percent of voters turned out, according to preliminary data released by the Electoral Court. The rest were blank votes or non-voters.
While failing to entice apathetic young voters and generating extraordinary indecision, Uruguay’s lackluster electoral campaigns steered clear of the anti-establishment fury that has vaulted populist outsiders to power elsewhere in the world, like in the United States and neighboring Argentina.
Delgado’s concession ushers in Orsi as Uruguay’s new leader and spells an end to a short stint by the center-right party in Uruguay. The 2019 election of President Luis Lacalle Pou interrupted 15 consecutive years of rule by the Broad Front.
“I called Yamandú Orsi to congratulate him as President-elect of our country,” Lacalle Pou wrote on social media platform X, adding that he would “put myself at his service and begin the transition as soon as I deem it appropriate.”
Orsi’s victory was the latest sign that simmering discontent over post-pandemic economic malaise favors anti-incumbent candidates. In the many elections that took place during 2024, voters frustrated with the status quo have punished ruling parties from the US and Britain to South Korea and Japan.
But unlike elsewhere in the world, Orsi is a moderate who plans no radical changes and agrees with his opponent on key issues like combating childhood poverty and cracking down on organized crime.
Despite his promise to lead a “new left” in Uruguay, his platform resembles the mix of market-friendly policies and welfare programs that characterized the Broad Front’s tenure from 2005-2020. The coalition of leftist and center-left parties presided over a period of economic growth and pioneering social reforms that won widespread international acclaim.
Behind Uruguay’s legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage and sale of marijuana was former President José “Pepe” Mujica, an ex-Marxist guerilla who became a global icon and mentor to Orsi.
Mujica, now 89 and recovering from esophageal cancer, turned up at his local polling station before balloting even began, praising Orsi’s humility and Uruguay’s famous stability.
“This is no small feat,” he said of Uruguay’s “citizenry that respects formal institutions.”
Orsi proposes tax incentives to lure investment and social security reforms that would lower the retirement age but fall short of a radical overhaul sought by Uruguay’s unions that failed to pass in October, with Uruguayans rejecting generous pensions in favor of fiscal constraint.
“He’s my candidate, not only for my sake but also for my children’s,” Yeny Varone, a nurse at a polling station, said of Orsi. “In the future they’ll have better working conditions, health and salaries.”
Delgado, 55, a rural veterinarian with a long career in the National Party, served most recently as Secretary of the Presidency for Lacalle Pou and campaigned under the slogan “re-elect a good government.”
With inflation easing and the economy expected to expand by some 3.2 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, Delgado has promised to continue pursuing his predecessor’s pro-business policies. Lacalle Pou, who constitutionally cannot run for a second consecutive term, has enjoyed high approval ratings.
But the official results trickling in Sunday showed that mounting complaints in Uruguay about years of sluggish economic growth, stagnant wages and the government’s struggle to stem an upsurge in violent crime helped to swing the election against Delgado’s party.
In the weeks after the Oct. 27 general election — in which neither front-runner secured an outright majority — most polls had showed a virtual tie between Delgado and Orsi.
Turnout on Sunday stood at 89.4 percent in the nation where voting is compulsory, with over 2.7 million citizens registered.
In his victory speech, Orsi struck a conciliatory tone.
“I will be the president who calls for national dialogue again and again, who builds a more integrated society and country,” he said, adding that he would get to work “starting tomorrow.”