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Search As a co-chair of the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty—convened by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund—Nestlé is working alongside industry leaders and stakeholders to champion a harmonized, impactful approach to managing plastic pollution. In this interview, Jodie Roussell, representing Nestlé’s commitment to sustainability, explains why a Global Plastics Treaty is essential for the company, the consumer goods industry, and the future of our planet.
Jodie, why is it important for us to have a Global Treaty?
The importance of the United Nations Treaty on plastic pollution is critical.
The United Nations Environment Program is citing risks due to increased production of virgin plastics including going beyond the 1.5° climate target, exceeding chemical planetary boundaries, negative impacts on human and animal health, degrading biodiversity and oceans and freshwater ecosystems, and risks to human health and agricultural yields.
Companies need a level playing field to address these systemic challenges and it is important to have harmonized regulations in place so that the rules of the game are the same for everyone participating in the market economy today.
Active companies are seeing that voluntary commitments and decades of rather fragmented policy development, both for materials regulation, the circular economy and waste management are quite challenging. Today business faces significant regulatory and infrastructure systems gaps, high compliance costs, limited economies of scale, and the recognition that the waste management value chain has human rights risks. A treaty can potentially address all of these challenges – if it can align government’s positions and regulations over the long term across borders.
Is the Treaty important to Nestle?
Ultimately, the Treaty is a negotiated agreement between governments. It will be a driver of new national legislation post-ratification. This is important to us at Nestlé.
We’ve been working on plastic packaging related issues and sustainability since 2017 intensely, but as well in the decades before, and we see this as an opportunity to get post consumer waste, manage with the appropriate infrastructure and have a fair share of the distribution of costs of the collection and management of post consumer waste.
You’ll be representing in Busan, not just as Nestle, but most importantly as a Co-Chair of the Business Coalition. Why did you join the business coalition?
We joined the business coalition at the beginning, and today there are about 300 other organizations. Members include financial institutions, consumer goods brands and retailers, converters and producers and producers, waste management companies,business organizations,NGO’s and companies supporting the packaging value chain. The reason we joined was we wanted to stand for three core principles, that we had already been working on for years:
Firstly, its about supporting the reduction of plastic production and use to sustainable levels with a circular economy approach. Secondly circulating all the plastic materials that are in the economy, keeping it out of nature. Thirdly, preventing and remediating hard to abate micro and macro plastics from leaking into the environment.
Looking forward to Busan, we’re hoping for wide support for the Chair’s proposal for the Non-paper 3.0, which is a streamlined version of what was previously a 77 page text of the Treaty with over 3500 brackets (indicating text raised in question by one of the Member States). This text had become unmanageable. This Non-Paper 3.0 is 17 pages and addresses critical elements. We hope that the Member States will agree to work on the non-paper 3.0 as the basis for a future treaty.
Critical elements from the Business Coalition perspective include parties looking at appropriate targets and measures to address plastic products, chemicals used in plastic products, product design and emissions and releases, as well as measures to promote sustainable production and consumption of plastics with circular economy approaches to waste management.
We also think that there are some key elements to enable effective implementation of the Treaty and that would include:
- all the Member States establishing national targets and implementation plans and
- monitoring effective progress through an evaluation system,
- committing to capacity building, technological and financial support systems
- promoting a just transition and inclusive stakeholder engagement
as the systems that support how we use materials and their end of life are transformed.
Do you have a message for companies who are not yet part of the business coalition?
Harmonized regulation benefits all business with simplified compliance, and drives economies of scale in sustainable solutions. The Treaty has the potential to drive new global norms that will impact future regulation in countries around the world.
So if you could summarize by saying the one major expectation you have from Busan, what would it be? The one major expectation would be that the Member States and the stakeholders both arrive to support the chairs timeline, and process objectives, and are ready to negotiate a final text.
Thank you, Jodie.
Thank you very much.
