Switzerland calls for “historic” agreement against plastic pollution
Keystone-SDA
Switzerland has called for a “historical” treaty against plastic pollution at the UN Plastics Conference in Geneva. The approximately 170 participating states are to campaign for a binding treaty.
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“We want to put an end to plastic pollution. We want to protect human health and the environment. And we want to do this now,” said Katrin Schneeberger, Head of the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN), at the start of the ten-day negotiations in Geneva on Tuesday. After three years of negotiations, she called for a “strong signal in favour of multilateralism”.
The Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (Unep), Inger Andersen, agreed, but admitted that there was still a lot of work to be done. In particular, some oil-producing countries would have to be persuaded to agree to an agreement on the circular economy of plastics – from production to waste disposal. Without progress, there could be three times as much plastic in circulation by 2060 as there is today.
Translated from German by DeepL/jdp
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