Developing Country Voices Will Be Excluded at UN Plastic Talks, Say NGOs (theguardian.com) 28
Scientists and NGOs have accused the UN's environment programme (Unep) of locking out those "most needing to be heard" from upcoming negotiations in Paris aimed at halting plastic waste. From a report: Last-minute restrictions to the numbers of NGOs attending what the head of Unep described as the "most important multilateral environmental deal" in a decade will exclude people from communities in developing countries harmed by dumping and burning of plastic waste as well as marginalised waste pickers, who are crucial to recycling, from fully participating, they said. The groups criticised the agency for publishing a report this week, before negotiations between 193 countries over 29 May to 2 June, which they claimed did not fully reflect the health and environmental effects of plastic pollution.
The report said mismanaged plastic waste could be slashed by 80% by 2040. Scientists's Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty (Scept), representing 200 scientists who were invited to comment before the report's publication, said their concerns and criticisms were ignored. Unep said it regretted that "due to a technical issue" an email containing Scept comments was not received in time for publication. However, it said it received feedback from 75 experts from 39 organisations that were incorporated. It denied claims its report did not sufficiently reflect the health and environmental impacts of plastic.
The report said mismanaged plastic waste could be slashed by 80% by 2040. Scientists's Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty (Scept), representing 200 scientists who were invited to comment before the report's publication, said their concerns and criticisms were ignored. Unep said it regretted that "due to a technical issue" an email containing Scept comments was not received in time for publication. However, it said it received feedback from 75 experts from 39 organisations that were incorporated. It denied claims its report did not sufficiently reflect the health and environmental impacts of plastic.
There's a great future in plastics. Think about it (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, we have thought about it and the great future in plastics is a polluted planet, poisoned food stocks and no solution in sight and countries just ship their trash to the third world where it is dumped into the ocean
When are we going to hold the companies that produce this garbage responsible for cleaning it up?
fwiw, were paper sacks, wax lined paper cups and straw really all that bad?
This time around ,we just need to use hemp to make the paper instead of valuable trees (fyi Randolph Hearst spread propaganda to keep hemp illegal so that he could pulp our NW US forests for paper)
Country Voices will be excluded (Score:3)
But Pop and Rap voices will be allowed
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Only developing country voices. Deteriorating country voices, like Willie Nelson, will be allowed.
George Carlin on Plastics and the Global Ecosystem (Score:3, Funny)
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Pack your shit folks, we're goin' away.
Re:George Carlin on Plastics and the Global Ecosys (Score:4, Informative)
"The planet will be fine. But the people, the people are FUCKED!"
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He was right in a very literal sense:
https://www.extremetech.com/sc... [extremetech.com]
There's going to be a layer of some weird-ass shit left behind after humanity's extinction event.
Plastic is Life (Score:1, Troll)
One reason why it's important for developing countries to be heard here, is that plastic helps public health.
Plastic packaging just preserves things better, and things like plastic bags help prevent the rise of contact borne illnesses (reusable shopping bags became a concern during Covid until it was found Covid didn't spread by contact [although in recent news maybe it is? But I digress]). So citizens of developing nations deserve the same health benefits the West has enjoyed.
We do also need to figure ou
Re:Plastic is Life (Score:5, Informative)
I think that you should read about the Philippines being so adversely affected by plastics that the President there wants to ban them (pics included) [reuters.com]
And the President being quoted (Duarte) was extremely pro business
It is a lot more than just a few plastic bags hanging in trees, it is whole sale choking of rivers, covering beaches and littering every possible place
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You have no idea how plastics are used in the Philippines
#1 use is simply repacking things into smaller "sachets", it is not food related, it is poverty relate [washingtonpost.com]
aside from that, tons of waste plastic was shipped to the Philippines from US to be "recycled" but most of it is too dirty for recycling so they just dump it into the ocean [nikkei.com]
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#1 use is simply repacking things into smaller "sachets"
It's a cultural thing. They like to buy small quantities in individual wrappings. There are many third world countries where produce is displayed in bulk, weighed out by the merchant and wrapped and carried away by the customers in their own containers.
Maybe it's their history of US occupation. They saw goods prepackaged and sold. So that a the status symbol, with a brand label printed on the container.
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no countries will be excluded
I asked "voices", not "countries". Which point(s) of view does Scept represent? What, if anything of importance, will be missed by their exclusion?
TFA said it was an issue of "Limits on numbers at Paris summit". Not late e-mail.
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Which point(s) of view does Scept represent?
The point of view of people who have trouble with scheduling.
Here is what the summary says, read it:
"due to a technical issue" an email containing Scept comments was not received in time for publication.
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Does this eliminate any possibility that the email was ignored or slow-walked in order to avoid addressing their issues
I know, I know, the ethics of the UN shall not be questioned ;)
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They should be included (Score:5, Insightful)
It's very important that developing countries are included in these talks.
We need to include the Philippines (#1 for plastic waste washed into the sea). We also need to include India (#2) and Malaysia (#3). source [visualcapitalist.com].
We need to include the nations with the largest number of fishing vessles in the world, whose discarded fishing gear produces most of the plastic in the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" and much other ocean plastic (20% of global total). That would be China (by far the biggest fishing fleet in the world), along with countries like Benin, Mexico, Bangladesh, Korea, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia. Sources here [theoceancleanup.com] and here [fao.org].
In case it is not yet clear: plastic waste and pollution is not only a rich country problem. It's not even mostly a rich country problem. Trying to blame it just on rich countries will not solve the problem. All countries must be engaged and take responsibility for this.
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It's very important that developing countries are included in these talks.
They are, but the headline is easy to misread. All countries (governments) are included. Some NGOs were excluded (due to space restrictions or whatever reason", so there will be fewer of these "voices" than expected.
new forms of colonization (Score:1)
that's all it is, a new form of colonization by imperialist countries...
then the west will wonder why all those countries side with Russia...
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Yet most of the plastic crap that ends up in landfills originates from them.
Yeah sure. They are shipping their plastic crap to the US landfills. That willingness to blame China for everything that you are doing wrong is amazing. I guess it is a coping mechanism.
Developing countries are the dumping ground (Score:2)
UN is itself a waste (Score:2)
subject says it all