By Valerie Volcovici
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States, one of the world’s biggest plastic makers, will support a global treaty calling for a reduction in how much new plastic is produced each year – a major shift from its earlier calls to leave such decisions up to each country, a source close to U.S. negotiators told Reuters on Wednesday.
The change puts the U.S. in direct opposition to countries like Saudi Arabia and China. They have argued that the hoped-for UN treaty, which negotiators are scheduled to conclude at a November summit in Busan, South Korea, should ignore questions of production and focus on downstream measures such as encouraging recycling and changing packaging design.
It also puts the U.S. in closer alignment with a group of so-called high ambition countries that includes EU member states, South Korea, Canada, Rwanda and Peru and has called for a global plastics treaty to cap and phase down the production of plastic. The group has also targeted a list of chemicals of environmental concern used in plastic production that should be eliminated.
The U.S. now also supports working to create a possible global list of chemicals that should be phased out to avoid a “patchwork” of different national requirements, as well as set global criteria to identify what should be on a list of “avoidable plastic products” to phase out, the source said.
The debate over whether a UN treaty should seek to limit the amount of plastic being made drove the last round of negotiations in Ottawa in April to overtime, with major plastic and petrochemical producers like Saudi Arabia and China arguing that countries should focus on less contentious topics such as plastic waste management and product design.
The EU and other parties have raised concerns that ongoing divisions between countries over the scope of the treaty will make it difficult to close negotiations in Busan.
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Timothy Gardner)
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