At UN Ocean Conference, new governments commit to circular economy for plastics

Efforts on tackling plastic pollution got a boost at the UN Ocean Conference when 21 new governments announced they will join the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment.

The UN Ocean Conference is holding June 27 to July 1 in Lisbon, Portugal.

Established in 2018 and led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Global Commitment brings together stakeholders across the plastics value chain to drive the transition towards a circular economy for plastic, where plastic never becomes waste. All business and government signatories set ambitious actions and targets across the life cycle to address plastic pollution and report annually on progress.

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On the eve of the 2022 UN Ocean Conference, at a side event co-hosted by Kenya and France; the Governments of Australia, Belgium, Kenya, Mexico, and Thailand announced their intention to join the Global Commitment. Three of Mexico’s state-level governments, Baja California, Baja California Sur, and Sinaloa as well as the cities of Querétaro, Ensenada, and San Miguel de Allende and 10 states from Brazil including São Paulo and the nine States of the Consórcio Nordeste: Alagoas, Bahia, Ceará, Maranhão, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Piauí, Rio Grande do Norte, and Sergipe, covering almost 50 per cent of the population of Brazil, also announced they would become signatories. On Monday morning, at the opening of the UN Ocean Conference, President Nana Akufo-Addo announced Ghana would also be joining.

The new governments follow 11 other governments who announced they were becoming signatories of the Global Commitment at the French-led ‘One Ocean Summit’ in February 2022. They joined other signatory governments and 500+ signatories from across the plastics value chain.