276. Action On Plastic Pollution with Ellen MacArthur
Outrage + Optimism
Persephonica
4.7 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 5 December 2024
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Christiana, Tom and Paul tackle the latest on the global plastics treaty (known as INC-5), which ended last week without a deal. Why were countries unable to agree a deal despite the huge amount of public concern about plastic pollution? What pathways remain for an agreement in 2025? And why is it so important to maintain focus on plastic from a climate point of view? Dive into the challenges and explore potential solutions with the team.
Continuing this critical theme, Ellen MacArthur, Founder & Chair of Trustees of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, world record-breaking sailor and circular economy advocate, joins Christiana to share an exclusive conversation as part of a collaboration between The Circular Economy Show and Outrage + Optimism. Together they consider what’s next for the global plastics treaty, get excited about the role of the private sector in tackling plastic pollution, and highlight how the visibility of plastics can help capture public attention on climate.
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NOTES AND RESOURCES
GUEST
Dame Ellen MacArthur
Ellen MacArthur Foundation
Website | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter (X)
The Foundation works to accelerate the transition to a circular economy, if you’d like to find out more, the Foundation’s podcast ‘The Circular Economy Show’ talks to experts from across industry, governments and academia to hear first hand about how the circular economy is being developed and scaled.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to outrage and optimism. I'm Tom Rific Carnot. |
| 0:09.3 | I'm Cristiana. And I'm Paul Dickinson. Today we talk about the UN Global Plastics |
| 0:13.9 | Treaty negotiations that took place in Korea. What happened, what went wrong and what's next. |
| 0:18.6 | And we speak to Dame Ellen McCarthy. Thanks for being. |
| 0:23.7 | Listeners, it may be hard to remember. |
| 0:25.4 | A couple of months ago, we had a discussion on outrage and optimism about the fact that there was more than one cop coming up in the next few months. |
| 0:32.3 | And in fact, there were multiple. |
| 0:33.5 | So first we had the nature cop, then we had the climate cop. |
| 0:36.6 | And just recently concluded in Korea |
| 0:38.9 | was the third of four COPS happening at the end of 2024, and that was the attempt to reach |
| 0:44.3 | a global binding treaty on plastics, the UN Plastics Treaty, also known as the Intergovernmental |
| 0:50.4 | Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution, or for short, INC-5. Now, those negotiations ended a few days |
| 0:57.9 | ago and tragically, they failed to reach a collective agreement on where we go next. The specific |
| 1:04.9 | outcomes said that despite the determined efforts of the chair and some government representatives, |
| 1:09.6 | there was not a final global plastics treaty when the negotiations closed of the chair and some government representatives, there was not a final |
| 1:11.5 | global plastics treaty when the negotiations closed on the 1st of December. |
| 1:15.9 | This is the end of two years of negotiations, and it really underscores the difficulty in trying |
| 1:21.5 | to get on top of a material that is now ubiquitous, underpins a multi-billion dollar industry, but also, |
| 1:29.0 | as we know, is creating untold damage around the world. |
| 1:32.9 | So that's the setup, which of you would like to start off by any reflections on what has |
| 1:36.5 | just happened in Busan? |
| 1:37.5 | I can step in. |
... |
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