By CFACT Ed
The United Nations adjourned its plastics summit in Geneva, Switzerland, with no version of a global treaty coming close to reaching “consensus.”
This is great news for the global economy, as radical proposals sought to place taxes and controls on every phase of plastic production and use.
The UN plastics summit tried to follow the climate conference script, where launching into late-night overtime is standard. Bleary eyes, however, induced no parties to alter their positions.
Developing nations and the EU were unable to convince manufacturing and petroleum-producing nations to agree on a draft.
The anti-plastics nations attempted to kill production via a death by a thousand cuts strategy, by calling for the elimination of important chemicals used in plastics production. The pro-plastics nations saw through the ploy and blocked it.
Plastics have been a crucial factor in enabling people at every economic level to afford high-quality manufactured goods. They are essential to societal abundance.
The ideal solution is to keep plastic in our economies, but to do a great job at managing recycling and waste. Nations with advanced economies have already made huge strides. The vast majority of plastic pollution in the oceans comes from fishing gear and a few rivers in Asia and Africa. Forbidding the use of plastic straws in Paris or Peoria achieves nothing meaningful to combat this waste.
As CFACT President Craig Rucker recently wrote, “The real tragedy isn’t plastic itself, but the mismanagement of plastic waste—and the regulatory stranglehold that blocks better solutions. In many countries, recycling is a government-run monopoly with little incentive to innovate. Meanwhile, private-sector entrepreneurs working on advanced recycling, biodegradable materials, and AI-powered sorting systems face burdensome red tape and market distortion.”
A new UN regime of taxation, mandates, and bans is not the way to deal with the issues surrounding plastics (or pretty much anything else). Working with developing nations to up their recycling and waste management is the way to go.
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The UN sucks and taxation never solved a damn thing.
The issue is, as it has always been, control.
Poor people are easier to control as they have no reserves and tend to live day to day.
Wealthy people don’t need government to tell them what to do and how to live.
Thus the first step for those who believe that they are smart enough to perfect humanity, is to destroy the world’s economies so that people will turn to them for salvation.
“Poor people are easier to control”
Average income, China; ” In 2022, the average annual salary for employees in urban non-private sectors was around 114,029 yuan (approximately $16,233 USD), while those in the private sector earned an average of 65,237 yuan (around $9,279 USD).”
Average income, Switzerland: “The average Swiss salary varies, but a common figure is around CHF 6,665 gross per month. This translates to roughly $7,000 USD, but it’s important to note that this is a median figure and can vary significantly based on experience, education, location, and industry. Some sources suggest an average closer to CHF 7,000-8,000, especially in major cities like Zurich.
I note that Google chose to express Chinese income as annual and Swiss income as monthly so the numbers are in the same ballpark. Google also lead low then went high for the Euro income but lead high then went low for the Chinese income.
If a person changes up the order and style of presenting information, well that just happens, there are reasons that people speak certain ways that often the people themselves could not explain. When a computer algorythm changes up the order and style of presenting information, someone is justified to wonder “why?”
Once again, answer wandered off track. My point was it’s rich people who want to control plastic waste disposal, poor people seem to be ignoring them.
(And f-in Google wants to control all of them)
I suspect the whole net-zero debacle has made countries much more aware how these sorts of things can spiral out of control and clash with a countries Sovereignty.
Well one kick in the nuts, but don’t worry: tomorrow they’ll bring it back or come up with another idiocy trying to grab money.
Bureocracies and cancer have the following in common:
No use whatsoever except self preservation and desperate to grow regardless if they kill the host they’re feeding off.
Someday morale may improve.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Waste plastic is a wonderful fuel if burnt in a properly designed power plant. It can also assist in the use of lower calorific waste presently sent to landfill. There is a big opportunity to do this once the Green Scam is killed off.
Plastic is wonderful. It keeps fresh products longer good. Also useful in healthcare.
But banning small plastic bags in grocery stores solves nothing. Now fruit and vegetables are individual wrapped in plastic. Then they force everyone to buy reusable plastic bags for fresh products, one bag is worth over 100 throwaway plastic bags. Like everything green, their alternative ends up more polluting. Don’t even start about banning plastic straws.
And, since the Canadian grocery bag ban, I have had to buy plastic bags for garbage.
Was in Oregon (?) or Washington (?) recently and had to BUY ($0.08) a paper bag. The clerk said that bags must be sold. They are real nice paper bags – large and thick enough to be worth the $0.08.
Yeah, this is a tough one for me. I don’t like the idea of being filled with microplastics from everything I eat and drink. But I also remember the days when we’d get meat just wrapped in brown wax paper from the butchers, fruit was always just out in the open surrounded by fruit flies and only in season, and soft drinks in 1 litre glass bottles would explode if you didn’t keep them chilled.
That’s the one question the anti-plastics crowd have never answered to my satisfaction. If we get rid of all plastics in the food industry, what are we replacing it with?
I agree and was going to write something similar. I’m old enough to remember the “butcher paper” and the time before plastic bottles. My hometown had an Owens-Illinois glass, O-I, bottle factory (#17, I think). Fifty years on, I still look for the symbols on the bottom of old bottles. Pepsi had a slogan: “Twice as much for a nickel too” in reference to its major competitor Coca-Cola – – each in glass bottles of a unique shape. Plastics and age caused the closure of the plant where family and friends worked.
I’ll add that the on-going research of nanoplastics in the body is showing health effects.
Might want to look at research on “microplastics”. There is a lot of small sample, poor technique, headline mismatches data going on there – because “meh, no big deal” doesn’t publish papers.
With any luck COP30 will go about as well. The anti-growth anti-freedom Greenie Weeny La-la land bubble has burst. Finally.
They never sleep-
Single-use Plastics are being phased out in South Australia. Find out more.
Those horror pictures of coastal plastic pollution are not of beaches in Europe or the USA but in Asia, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam. It is those countries that need to clean up their act. Once they’ve done that they may come back to lecture us.
I agree, but in the USA bottles of water and other drinks are a source of nano-plastic in the body, now being researched. Thus, not seen in those pictures mentioned.
“nano-plastic in the body, now being researched”
Maybe repeating myself, but please look at a few of the most-cited microplastic health studies. The average-aged USA citizen has consumed carbonated beverages from plastic bottles for their entire lives. If there’s a tragedy to be found it should be easily detected. I’d like to see funds earmarked for future microplastic studies redirected to SE Asian beach cleanup efforts.
“The first successful plastic soda bottle was patented in 1973 by Nathaniel Wyeth, a DuPont engineer who developed a process using polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and stretch blow molding, making it the first plastic container durable enough for carbonated drinks. Although plastic bottles for soft drinks began appearing in the early 1970s, Wyeth’s invention in 1973 was the key to creating the strong, lightweight, and reliable PET soda bottle we know today.
Here in BC, ground beef is sold in PETE plastic trays. Cookies are also sold in PETE plastic trays. Snack crackers are sold in bags of PE. Ice cream is sold in
4 liter PP pails. These clear plastics are recyclable.
Potato chips, Doritos, Cheetos, etc. are sold in multi-layered plastic bags which are not recyclable.
All colored plastic containers such as a French’s yellow mustard container are not recyclable.
The solution to all this plastic pollution is incineration in “Waste to Energy” Plants.
It is: Burn, Baby, Burn! Don’t worry about the CO2 form the incinerators because most of it is absorbed by the oceans and all other surface waters.
“The United Nations adjourned its plastics summit in Geneva, Switzerland, with no version of a global treaty coming close to reaching “consensus.””
My understanding is that the problem is most obvious in the Pacific Ocean. The summit is being run by European people in the mountains of Switzerland because….?
Asia won’t agree. Without Asia no other efforts will matter.
Next up is the international plastic conference at ski resorts and beaches.
There have been one or two articles I have seen (Epoch Times, perhaps/) that are warning that our use of plastic to cover foods, etc. is resulting in our absorbing into our bodies, tiny bits of plastic, which does not sound particularly healthy.
Any comments about this are appreciated. Thanks.
You would have to ask Pelosi !
Why are people living so long if the plastics are killing us ? The average person in the USA lives into their 80s.
Like I said before, this is a power play by the UN to get an unending source of taxes to fund their toys and ultra rich lifestyles.
The people running the UN nowadays want to use our children as footstools. We, the USA, need to leave this corrupt organization.