"In an expansion of the U.N.’s 1989 Basel Convention, amendments to the international protocol on the shipment of hazardous waste were revised to include plastics in 2021, with nations currently figuring out how to implement the agreement.
The United States is the only major nation not to have fully implemented the treaty, despite strong support for it among both the Republican and Democratic parties. The Biden administration could soon change that.
The U.S. remains a major dumper of hazardous waste globally, including large amounts of plastics, despite the attempted limitations imposed by the Basel Convention. The potential impacts of plastics and other “novel entities” on human health and ecosystems are largely unknown.
Even if the Basel Convention is successful in its mission, it will only solve part of the plastics problem, as it doesn’t address the manufacture of plastics or their domestic disposal. Plastics and a wide variety of human-made materials are included in the “novel entities” planetary boundary — one of nine major threats to life on Earth."
Charles Pekow reports for Mongabay May 17, 2021.
SEE ALSO:
"Twenty Firms Produce 55% Of World’S Plastic Waste, Report Reveals" (Guardian)
"The 1,000 Rivers Contributing The Most To Ocean Plastics" (Phys.org)
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