In South Korea, nations meet in final round to address global plastic crisis

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,” U.N. 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 advisor and plastics negotiator for Micronesia. “There’s a tagline, ‘You can’t recycle your