Many delegates, advocacy groups, and UN officials are hopeful that the 10-day session, which runs through August 14, will result in a final agreement that delivers on the UN’s objective to “end plastic pollution.” But progress has been slow at each of the five preceding sessions, in large part because of a consensus-based decision-making structure that has allowed oil-producing countries to obstruct progress.

While the UN Environment Programme is eager to conclude the negotiations, some delegates and environmental groups are worried that the pressure to agree to something will yield an unambitious treaty. They’re gearing up for a contentious week and a half and preparing for the possibility of more deadlock – in which case negotiations could continue at yet another plastics treaty session, or at a separate, higher-level UN meeting that’s happening this December.

For Chris Dixon, who has attended each of the plastics treaty negotiating sessions and is the oceans campaign leader for the non-profit Environmental Investigation Agency, the discussions in Geneva will be a “real test” at a time of flagging confidence in multilateralism. “There’s currently a lot of investment in delivering this [treaty] within the UN,” she told Grist. “Can we still get countries around the world to commit to something really meaningful?”

Here’s how we got to where we are now, and what to watch for over the next 10 days.

Why the UN is negotiating a plastics treaty

The world is drowning in more plastic than it can manage. Since the material began to be mass produced in the 1950s, annual production has soared to some 460 million metric tons – roughly the weight of 1,400 Empire State Buildings – and is projected to triple by 2060 under business as usual.

Today, only 9% of plastic is recycled because of technical and economic limitations; the rest is sent to landfills and incinerators, or becomes litter in the environment. Plastic now permeates virtually all of the Earth’s landscapes, as well as human organs such as the brain, lungs, testicles and ovaries. It’s associated with myriad health concerns, and – because it’s made from fossil fuels – it’s a major contributor to climate change.

“Plastics have so many egregious issues,” says Holly Kaufman, a senior fellow at the non-profit World Resources Institute and co-founder of a research project on plastic’s contribution to climate change. She also notes the disproportionate pollution burden borne by people living near plastic manufacturing facilities, as well as plastic’s impacts on ecosystems and wildlife.

UN member states agreed in March 2022 to tackle the problem by negotiating an international, legally binding treaty to “end plastic pollution” and set a goal of finishing it by the end of 2024. Few foresaw how contentious the process would be. Over five rounds of scheduled talks, countries have repeatedly sparred over the scope of the treaty, including whether its mandate to address the “full life cycle” of plastics implies some sort of limit on how much plastic the world can create.

A handful of fossil-fuel-producing countries including Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia used the consensus-based decision-making process to their advantage, stalling the negotiations over their opposition to plastic production limits, while a much larger bloc of other nations expressed a desire for more “ambitious” provisions. By the fifth round of talks in Busan, South Korea, last December, negotiators were so far behind that there was little hope they would be able to finish the agreement on schedule. The UN agreed to schedule one more meeting in 2025, calling it “part two” of the fifth negotiating session. That’s what’s kicking off this week.

What’s being negotiated

At the end of the last round of talks, the chair of the treaty negotiating committee published a “chair’s text” meant to encapsulate the full range of proposals under discussion and serve as a starting point for further negotiations. On production limits – the issue that has divided treaty negotiations from the outset – the text offers two options. One, depending on how it’s worded, could set a “global target” to “reduce,” “maintain” or “manage” the production of plastic, with the potential goal of reaching “sustainable levels” of “production and consumption.” The other option is no text at all, eliminating the article on plastic production altogether.

For green groups, a best-case scenario would be for the treaty to enshrine a global target directly – by requiring production to drop, say, 40% by 2040. Some countries might have to make deeper cuts, depending on their share of global plastic production and historical responsibility for plastic pollution, and each country would have to implement this goal through national legislation. Dixon said the window may have closed for such an agreement; it could be more realistic to push for the treaty to kick off a “target-setting process” that would unfold at annual meetings after the treaty is finalized.

Bjorn Beeler, executive director of the non-profit International Pollutants Elimination Network, has attended each treaty negotiating session, as well as previous UN meetings on plastic pollution starting in 2018. He isn’t expecting much progress on production limits either, saying the conversation on the topic hasn’t “matured” in the same way it has for other priority areas, particularly chemicals and their impacts on human health. Since treaty negotiations began, researchers have identified more than 16,000 chemicals used in plastic products, 4,200 of which are known to have hazardous properties. Most of the other chemicals have never been assessed for toxicity.

At the end of the Busan talks, 94 countries signed a declaration calling for the treaty to include legally binding phaseouts of “the most harmful plastic products and chemicals of concern in plastics.” A coalition of scientists advocating for an “effective” plastics treaty favour treaty regulations based on broad chemical classes, with a streamlined process to regulate more chemicals over time. The chair’s text, however, currently lists just seven chemicals for phase-out, and only in specific products. It also lists seven types of single-use plastic products like straws and cutlery, and does not mention particular polymers – polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, for instance – that are more likely to leach hazardous chemicals. Enforcing a phaseout of selected chemicals would likely be up to individual countries.

Other, less controversial parts of the chair’s text aim to create better waste-management systems; improve the “durability, reusability, refillability, refurbishability, repairability, and recyclability of plastic products”; clean up existing plastic pollution; and foster a “just transition” for waste pickers and other workers who may be affected by the implementation of the plastics treaty. Several of its objectives, like preventing the release of microplastics into the environment, could also protect human health, since exposure to these tiny plastic fragments is linked to heart attacks, strokes and chronic degenerative diseases, among other conditions.

The UN resolution for the plastics treaty acknowledges that it may create expensive legal obligations, especially for poorer developing countries – these countries may not have enough money to create more robust waste-management systems and replace the plastic they buy with costlier alternatives. Negotiators have been considering how to create a mechanism that would ease this burden, either by standing up a new multilateral fund, drawing from an existing one or designing some combination of the two. They’re also deliberating on whether and how to differentiate countries’ financial responsibilities based on their wealth and historic contribution to the plastic pollution crisis. The chair’s text on this topic is heavily bracketed, meaning little of it is set in stone, although a widely supported proposal that African, Latin American and small island countries released last year suggests that most delegates favour a new fund with mandatory contributions from the most developed countries.

Other financial proposals include a tax on plastic manufacturing and the elimination of plastic production subsidies, although these measures face long odds in Geneva because of opposition from industry groups and oil-producing states.

Rules of procedure and the specter of no agreement

More mundane, although perhaps more important, than any of the substantive issues up for discussion in Geneva is the way negotiators make decisions. So far, procedural rules that encourage consensus-based decision-making have made it possible for oil-producing countries to stand in the way of progress when confronted with proposals they dislike. This dynamic will likely continue unless negotiators adopt “rules of procedure” that allow for voting.

“It doesn’t matter if we’ve got 11 days or 11,000 days,” Beeler says. Without the possibility of a vote hanging over delegates, “it’s just going to be a perpetual discussion.” He says that Geneva would be a victory even if new rules of procedure were its only outcome, because “then you’ve cleared up the mechanism to actually negotiate” at a future date. Beeler and other observers would rather end the Geneva talks with no treaty rather than one that’s been watered down just to accommodate an August 14 deadline.

If negotiators leave Geneva without an agreement, the next official opportunity for them to engage in plastics treaty diplomacy will likely be at the UN Environment Assembly’s next convening, in Nairobi, Kenya, in December. That forum allows voting – a double-edged sword. Countries that want an ambitious treaty could use the meeting to break the logjam around issues like production limits and chemicals of concern – but oil-producing states could also introduce a proposal to rewrite the treaty mandate originally agreed on in 2022, striking language around the “full life cycle” of plastics and perhaps reorienting it around waste management.

Some environmental groups have suggested that, if the talks in Geneva go poorly, high-ambition countries could drop out of the treaty altogether and negotiate their own agreement outside the UN’s purview. There is precedent for this, notably in a 1997 multilateral agreement to ban landmines that Canada spearheaded after countries couldn’t agree to do so within the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. But others say this is unrealistic, given countries’ commitment to the plastics treaty process and the logistical difficulties of trying to start anew.

Whether or not negotiators finalize the treaty this month, Beeler emphasizes that the hard work of enacting and enforcing its provisions will take many years. These negotiating sessions are “a warm-up for a marathon,” he says. “The global fossil fuel-plastic-chemical economy is massive, and to address it and make any changes does not happen overnight.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Grist is a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at grist.org.

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Then in the weeks leading up to the final round of plastic treaty negotiations in Busan, South Korea, in November, that hope evaporated as the Biden administration backtracked on its promise and described reductions in plastic production as an aspirational “North Star” goal.

“I thought we were on the same page in terms of capping plastic and reducing production,” said Jo Banner, co-founder of The Descendants Project, a non-profit advocating for communities in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. “But it was clear that we just weren’t,” she told Grist.

By the time global delegates met in Busan, the seeds of failure had already been sown. Even though a “high ambition” group of more than 100 countries supported production caps, oil-producing nations such as the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and China – aided by more than 200 lobbyists from petrochemical firms – ensured that the talks ended without the unanimous support the new treaty requires. Indeed, as time was running out, a Kuwaiti delegate was still arguing that “plastic has brought immense benefit to societies worldwide.”

In reality, the planet is contaminated with nearly indestructible plastics that leach toxic chemicals throughout the environment, where they taint the food chain and the water we drink. Microplastics are now found in newborn babies and mothers’ breast milk, with untold consequences for human health and reproduction. Worse, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says plastic production will triple by 2060 without production limits. Yet fossil fuel producers say that plastic pollution is really a problem of poor waste management – which ignores the fact that many plastics are too hard to break down and that after decades of effort, only 9% of global plastic is being recycled.

Canadians may be forgiven for growing tired of the extraction industries’ obstinacy. When the federal government set out to ban several single-use plastics in 2022, declaring that all “plastic manufactured items” may constitute a threat to public health, the petrochemical lobby sued Ottawa. The Federal Court of Canada agreed that the Liberal government had over-reached its authority, a decision the government is appealing.

It’s no secret why the oil lobby is fighting so hard. It knows electric vehicles are about to eclipse the internal combustion engine, so it’s desperate to expand its petrochemical business.

What comes next for plastic waste reduction?

The failure of Busan will lead to another meeting in 2025, but with a notably less receptive government in the White House environmental advocates are looking for leadership elsewhere. The more ambitious nations, for instance, may forge a pact outside the UN framework. As European Union environmental commissioner Jessika Roswall said after Busan, “The EU will remain firmly committed to finding a global solution. Our oceans, our environment and citizens around the globe need it.”

California launched a new tactic in September. It sued ExxonMobil for “deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta. California based part of its claim on a recent study from the Center for Climate Integrity that found that the petrochemical industry has known since the 1980s that “recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution [to plastics], as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of.”

As the Busan talks were breaking down, Australian mining executive Andrew Forrest doubled down on his lobbying for a lower-ambition tool: a tax on plastic production, to encourage manufacturers to embrace recycling and reuse. Proceeds from the tax, Forrest wrote, “can be used to build waste-management systems, assist waste workers to transition to new jobs, clean up past pollution, and fund critical human health research to build understanding of the harm from plastic chemicals.”

Indeed, Spain, the United Kingdom and other European countries have just recently introduced taxes on single-use plastics to discourage production. While the taxes are too new to have had tangible impact, they demonstrate the power of getting started – and could be catalysts for global action.

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NPR went with “Plastic Junk: Researchers Find Tiny Particles in Men’s Testicles.” EHN wrote “Microplastics Found in the Testicles of Both Man and Man’s Best Friend” (picking up on the fact that the study in question measured both human and dog samples). Last week, late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert implored his audience to “Recycle your testicles! They can be ground up and made into new soda bottles.”

But though some of the commentary was tongue-in-cheek, the subject matter of the study that provoked the headlines couldn’t have been more serious. In a selection of human testicles from New Mexico, all samples had measurable levels of microplastics, representing 12 different types of plastic. The researchers speculated that the presence of these toxic particles in male reproductive organs might be driving declines in male fertility, which has halved around the world over the past 50 years, with the pace of decline more than doubling since 2000.

Though this study is the first prominent one to find plastic pollution in this most personal and unlikely of locations, it’s only the latest research to find that plastic pollution has become so ubiquitous, so overwhelmingly common, that it’s actually penetrating our own bodies. In the last few years, scientists have found microplastics in human breast milk, human blood and human lungs, to name only a few. In a March 2024 issue of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, scientists announced they had detected microplastics clogging the arteries of heart and stroke patients for the first time. And in the new documentary film Plastic People: The Hidden Crisis of Microplastics (which I have the honour of executive producing), we reveal new evidence showing, for the first time, microplastics in the human brain. The researchers behind this groundbreaking work are now investigating possible links between this pollution and diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

For the moment, the problem is getting worse, not better. Late last year, scientists in Hawaii showed that levels of microplastics in human placentas have increased over the past decade: a clear outcome of our society’s accelerating plastic addiction. An incredible 50% of all plastic produced by humans has been created in the past 15 years. Less than 10% of this is recycled, and the vast majority winds up jettisoned into the environment. Over time, bigger pieces of plastic (like disposable water bottles) degrade into tiny particles that are then so light we inhale and ingest them on a minute-by-minute basis.

To put it mildly, this recent but rapidly mounting evidence of a causal connection between plastic pollution and negative impacts on human health is a game changer.

Throughout history, different types of pollution problems have started to be solved only once they were clearly understood to be impinging on our quality of life. That’s why lead was removed from gasoline (it was shown to be harming the brain development of kids). That’s why the government of former prime minister Stephen Harper banned BPA in baby bottles (it’s not a good idea to make baby bottles out of a hormonally active chemical). And that’s why coal plants are being shut down (more smog means more asthma and heart disease).

The same moment of truth is now here for plastic pollution.

Endangered sea turtles are mistakenly eating plastic grocery bags? I’m concerned.

My wife has plastic in her placenta? I have plastic in my testicles? Make it stop.

Unsurprisingly, given that eight out of 10 Canadians support a crackdown on plastic pollution, the federal government has been moving to solve the problem. It banned a number of single-use, easy-to-replace, plastic items and is now constructing a common-sense registry to better track how much plastic is being created and disposed of.

Retailers are also acting. You know something serious is happening when Tim Hortons starts modifying its iconic packaging. I can confirm, from personal experience, that their new cardboard coffee cup lids work very well with my double-double.

The smart play for the plastic industry, now, is to start reducing its risk. This month’s blockbuster testicle headlines are the tip of the iceberg. Rather than stonewalling all new regulation, as Canada’s plastic sector has been, there is plenty of room for the industry to proactively make plastic safer. To do so will require banning the most toxic plastic formulations and reducing surges in production that are swamping efforts to find solutions.

We’re not recycling our way out of this problem. The scientific evidence could not be more clear and worrisome: plastic pollution is a human health hazard and a threat to our future. Hopefully, our self-preservation instinct kicks in any second now.

Rick Smith is executive producer of the new documentary Plastic People: The Hidden Crisis of Microplastics and the co-author of two bestselling books on the human health impacts of pollution. He is also president of the Canadian Climate Institute.

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Several other companies around the world are also offering to arrange for collecting plastic from where it winds up and doesn’t belong (landfills, waterways, roadsides), and then verify credits, including Plastic Bank and Plastic Credit Exchange. “As the plastic credit market is still emerging, at this stage each issuing organization largely follows its own protocols that govern the process of creating credits,” says rePurpose Global, another crediting platform that “empowers business to act on plastic pollution.”

Who’s eligible to buy plastic credits? It currently depends on the verification organization. Verra, for example, allows anyone along the plastics pipeline to participate: plastic makers, companies that use plastic packaging, wholesalers, or even retailers. Peter Wang Hjemdahl, the co-founder of rePurpose, tells Mongabay that “Governments, philanthropies, individuals, and companies can all support verified plastic recovery because we need all hands on deck to tackle the plastic pollution crisis.”

Forbes reports that rePurpose already funds plastic recovery projects in six nations and is working with companies and organizations like Nestlé, WWF and the World Bank to create an international plastic offset standard.

A wary response

Critics say there’s good reason to be skeptical of organizations offering plastic credit verification. They point to Verra’s carbon credit program which came under scrutiny this year for lack of verifiability and for serving as an excuse for companies not to reduce their carbon footprint. A recent investigation found that 90% of Verra’s verified rainforest carbon offsets were worthless “phantom credits” that failed to represent genuine carbon reductions.

Verra counters that plastic credits will be easier to verify than atmospheric emissions because auditors can see the physical material flow, from collection to reuse, and don’t have to speculate or calculate as with invisible gases. Verra may also have learned from its carbon credits experience, and is on the spot to perform this time, suggests Bjørnufl Østvik, CEO of Ecogensus, a New York City-based company focused on global recycling and sustainable waste management. “I don’t think there’s going to be patience with another credit system” that goes wrong, he says.

Østvik estimates it could take at least a decade under the best possible scenario just to clean up existing plastic pollution, with verification programs being potentially helpful in that cleanup. “When you look beyond the 10-20-year time frame, or 10-30-year time frame … science will get to a point where waste [management] and recycling can evolve to where these types of programs [will then] start to become not needed.”

However, scientists emphasize that plastic cleanups and recycling can only deal with larger plastic waste. There is currently no technologically effective means for removing the microplastics that now pollute the environment — where these invisible particles pose risks to wildlife and even the climate.

A work in progress

Verra currently accredits four plastic credit projects, most recently opening one in Senegal, its first in Africa. There, it works with a local sustainability outfit called Africa Carbon & Commodities (ACC). It took a year and a half of setup and audit before Verra approved the Senegal program. It says 30 other accreditation projects are in the pipeline, while ACC plans to expand its operations into Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, and the Gambia.

ACC’s Deekali Plastic Project in Senegal provides paying jobs for landfill waste pickers, says managing director Nicole Dewing. They are trained as to what types of plastic can earn credits, since many types are not reusable. “They are not going to get paid if they bring the wrong kind of plastic,” she says.

Because of the lack of government-sponsored waste management programs in Senegal (population 17.9 million), analysts predict the small country will be deluged with more “unmanaged” plastic waste than the U.S. by 2025, Dewing says, especially along its Atlantic coast. ACC’s project turns some collected waste into plastic lumber, which is then crafted into tables, desks and chairs for schools. But ACC says it currently lacks the machinery to recycle and reuse plastic bottles.

Verra’s certification process allows plastic to be incinerated or turned into energy to replace fossil fuel, but rePurpose doesn’t credit incinerated plastic. Incineration, also called pyrolysis, and dubbed “chemical recycling” or “advanced recycling” by the plastics industry, is controversial for the pollution it causes.

Accuracy assurances

Plastic credit providers say they use all sorts of methods to confirm accuracy. rePurpose says it “collects chain-of-custody documentation from all stakeholders involved in the supply chain. The protocol ensures timely audits, spot checks, unannounced site visits, and impact verification from third-party auditors on an ongoing basis.”

rePurpose also says that “certifications are not a license to continue using plastic and keep contributing to the plastic waste problem.” Company co-founder Hjemdahl says that “we have long-term engagements with over 300 brands and organizations globally to help them pursue a comprehensive plastic action strategy,” of which credits are only a part.

In the meantime, he says, “we’ve [validated collection of] 38 million pounds [17,200 metric tons] of plastic [and more that hasn’t been validated] that would be in the environment today if we hadn’t existed.” The Southern Hemisphere countries rePurpose works in lack strategies to clean up plastic waste, so presumably anything collected is a plus, he adds.

As with other certifying organizations, rePurpose stresses its focus on accuracy, employing everything from visual inspections to outside auditors, Hjemdahl notes. “If there’s a discrepancy, we fix it,” using the most conservative figures.

He acknowledges that his company must take into consideration that those at various points along the recovery supply chain have incentives for providing different counts: Those selling the plastic want a higher count, whereas those buying (the plastic, not the credit) prefer to give a lower number. So certification inspectors need to check carefully at every step of the process.

Chris DeArmitt runs Phantom Plastics from Cincinnati, Ohio, which consults with business on plastics problems. He says credits can work because people won’t discard something if they find value in it. While people may throw away single-use bottles, he notes, “people don’t drop their credit cards.” He adds that “the credits thing is just a lot of people trying to enrich themselves,” but the system works because of financial incentives.

Greenwashing risk

Critics see plastic credit systems as little more than window dressing, giving firms an excuse to continue making and using plastic rather than finding alternatives. The NGO #BreakFreeFromPlastic, which calls itself “the global movement envisioning a future free from plastic pollution,” documented that a Verra-certified incinerator in Bali, Indonesia, was fouling the air. And in Brazil, where Nestlé was earning credits, the “certificates do not guarantee that the companies’ products are effectively recycled,” says the NGO, adding that Nestlé hasn’t proved its activity is helping, rather than harming, the environment.

“It’s a downstream approach dealing only with plastic waste, and while that may address legacy plastics, it completely disregards the impacts of plastic in the earlier stages of [the] life cycle (extraction, production, consumer use). Also, cleanups are not necessarily in areas where the pollution of production or transportation occurs,” says Marian Ledesma, zero waste campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia.

Credits give companies a pretext to keep making disposable plastics products, she adds. “Unfortunately, there has not been as much effort to look at plastic reduction,” or at using “different types of plastic” or substitute materials. Nothing in the certification system calls on manufacturers to make or use recyclable or biodegradable plastics or improve production, Ledesma says. Credits “give all the plastic makers an excuse to continue their plastic production.”

ACC’s Dewing counters that “people say this is greenwashing. [But] this is not greenwashing at all. It is getting the plastic out of the environment and getting it to have value.” Plastic was littered all over the road before the ACC initiative became active, Dewing said. Now she sees less of it.

A working paper issued last year by the International Solid Waste Association for the U.N. Environment Programme summed up the debate. It concluded that “plastic credit mechanisms can play a significant role within sustainable waste management systems, along with local and national policies such as producer responsibility schemes and waste prevention and reduction laws, but can also be a potential tool for greenwashing if not implemented properly. Plastic credits are not a long-term solution but rather a short-term remedy while we move to better waste and resource management systems.”

How representatives from the world’s nations will deal with plastic credits in the evolving U.N. plastics treaty negotiations is anyone’s guess.

Corrections: This article was updated on 10/23/23 to include minor corrections and clarifications made by Verra, rePurpose and ACC.

This article was first published by Mongabay.

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“Waste has always been inflicted upon the margins,” said Oliver Franklin-Wallis, author of the new book Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future. Waste, he writes, is often exported from rich countries to poor ones, a phenomenon known as “toxic colonialism.”

“Too often waste is ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ We think about throwing things away, but don’t really understand where away is or who the people are on the other side.”

Wasteland is an exploration of those places and people on the other side. In the course of his reporting, Franklin-Wallis, an editor at British GQ, visits a 69-acre landfill outside New Delhi, where waste pickers expertly sort a dizzying array of plastics, an incinerator west of London that burns 430,000 metric tons of garbage each year, and a Superfund site in Oklahoma, where workers are turning toxic mining waste into asphalt.

If consumers understood the true economic and environmental toll of the waste we produce, he argues, we would behave differently.

Humans produce about 2 billion tons of solid waste each year, according to the World Bank, and only about one-fifth of all that waste is recycled or composted. All those tossed plastic Coca-Cola bottles, Shein leggings, old iPhones and food scraps take a staggering environmental toll. The solid waste industry accounts for 5% of global greenhouse emissions, which, as Franklin-Wallis notes is more than the shipping and aviation industries combined. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which collects some of the estimated 11 million tons of plastic waste thrown into the oceans each year, is about twice the size of Texas.

Humans have always created waste. As Franklin-Wallis writes, “Archeologists, those ancient dumpster divers, have reconstructed our history from trash: discarded weapons, smashed pots and urns, food scraps with bite marks still noted in the bones.”

But the introduction of consumer plastics in the years following World War II changed everything. Today, more than one million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute. More than half of fabric fibers — which clog waste streams like Ghana’s Kpone landfill — are now derived from plastics.

Those cheaper materials, paired with outsourced labor, efficient manufacturing and reduced trade barriers, caused the price of consumer goods to plummet. The amount of waste produced by the average American — on average, the world’s most wasteful consumer — tripled between 1960 and 2010. “The explosion of consumer plastic required a total reconfiguring of the waste stream,” Franklin-Wallis said.

Inundated with waste, in the 1980s, Western countries began exporting trash and recycling. Between 1988 and 2018, China received about 47% of all global plastic waste for recycling. Then, in January 2018, Beijing suddenly banned the importation of most types of plastic waste through a policy known as “National Sword.” The materials flooded into countries in Southeast Asia — Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand — which, one by one, enacted their own bans against the imports.

As he reported on the fallout from “National Sword,” Franklin-Wallis developed an appreciation for how complex the waste industry is. “The supply chain that takes apart our stuff is sometimes just as complicated as the ones making them in the first place,” he said. “We’re talking about a multi-billion dollar industry involving millions of people.”

In Ghana, just miles away from the now defunct Kpone landfill, Franklin-Wallis visits Kantamanto, one of the region’s largest second-hand clothing markets, where vendors sell an estimated 15 million garments a week. He meets with nearby electronics importers who resell electronic waste, or e-waste, (in this case, laptops from Holland) to local schools.

“A lot of the people in this system are doing it to make money, and it has benefits — it also has drawbacks we need to find ways to mitigate,” he said. E-waste, for example, is the fastest growing and most valuable waste stream in the world by weight, but the practice of dismantling and recycling the goods can leach toxic chemicals, including lead.

In the course of reporting Wasteland, Franklin-Wallis began to rethink his own consumption practices. He swapped out his plastic toothbrush for a bamboo one. He learned to sew so he could fix his clothes rather than buy new ones. He started buying more of his kids’ clothing and toys secondhand.

But he cautions against narratives that place the blame for the waste crisis at the individual level. “There have been these very successful drives to convince us that [the waste crisis] is the fault of individuals,” he said.

The supply chain that takes apart our stuff is sometimes just as complicated as the ones making them in the first place.

In the 1950s, the Keep America Beautiful program, whose founders included the American Can Company and Coca-Cola, launched clean-up campaigns across the country and coined the term “litterbug” to help the companies producing waste evade public scrutiny. Franklin-Wallis compares that campaign to the way British Petroleum popularized the term “carbon footprint.”

As Franklin-Wallis sees it, governments need to regulate the companies producing waste — including fossil fuel giants who are turning to plastic production to hedge against falling oil demand.

Several companies have signed on to Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) plans, in which companies that produce waste pay into waste management systems — although those funds seldom reach the lower-income countries that are often the final destination for these products, Franklin-Wallis said. Many governments have also passed Right to Repair legislation, which is aimed at reducing electronics waste.

And earlier this month, United Nations negotiators released a draft of the global plastics treaty, which, among other things, outlines a plan to reduce the manufacture of new plastics.  Nonetheless, consumers still need to understand the true impact of their waste.

Changing consumer behavior will require a crackdown on greenwashing, Franklin-Wallis said. Contrary to popular belief, most plastics are not recyclable (unregulated labeling may lead consumers to believe otherwise) and plastics that are labeled as compostable often do not disintegrate as promised, to name just a few examples.

‘The waste industry is absolutely replete with greenwashing,” Franklin-Wallis said. “If we just get some truth out into the system, it will make people reckon with the waste that we’re creating.”

This article by Nexus Media News is published here as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.

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The Manhattan Project spawned a trinity of interconnected legacies. It initiated a global arms race that threatens the survival of humanity and the planet as we know it. It also led to widespread public health and environmental damage from nuclear weapons production and testing. And it generated a culture of governmental secrecy with troubling political consequences.

As a researcher examining communication in science, technology, energy and environmental contexts, I’ve studied these legacies of nuclear weapons production. From 2000 to 2005, I also served on a citizen advisory board that provides input to federal and state officials on a massive environmental cleanup program at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state that continues today.

Hanford is less well known than Los Alamos, New Mexico, where scientists designed the first atomic weapons, but it was also crucial to the Manhattan Project. There, an enormous, secret industrial facility produced the plutonium fuel for the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, and the bomb that incinerated Nagasaki a few weeks later. (The Hiroshima bomb was fueled by uranium produced in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at another of the principal Manhattan Project sites.)

Later, workers at Hanford made most of the plutonium used in the U.S. nuclear arsenal throughout the Cold War. In the process, Hanford became one of the most contaminated places on Earth. Total cleanup costs are projected to reach up to US$640 billion, and the job won’t be completed for decades, if ever.

Victims of nuclear tests

Nuclear weapons production and testing have harmed public health and the environment in multiple ways. For example, a new study released in preprint form in July 2023 while awaiting scientific peer review finds that fallout from the Trinity nuclear test reached 46 U.S. states and parts of Canada and Mexico.

Dozens of families who lived near the site – many of them Hispanic or Indigenous – were unknowingly exposed to radioactive contamination. So far, they have not been included in the federal program to compensate uranium miners and “downwinders” who developed radiation-linked illnesses after exposure to later atmospheric nuclear tests.

On July 27, 2023, however, the U.S. Senate voted to extend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act and expand it to communities near the Trinity test site in New Mexico. A companion bill is under consideration in the House of Representatives.

The largest above-ground U.S. tests, along with tests conducted underwater, took place in the Pacific islands. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and other nations conducted their own testing programs. Globally through 2017, nuclear-armed nations exploded 528 weapons above ground or underwater, and an additional 1,528 underground.

Estimating how many people have suffered health effects from these tests is notoriously difficult. So is accounting for disruptions to communities that were displaced by these experiments.

Polluted soil and water

Nuclear weapons production has also exposed many people, communities and ecosystems to radiological and toxic chemical pollution. Here, Hanford offers troubling lessons.

Starting in 1944, workers at the remote site in eastern Washington state irradiated uranium fuel in reactors and then dissolved it in acid to extract its plutonium content. Hanford’s nine reactors, located along the Columbia River to provide a source of cooling water, discharged water contaminated with radioactive and hazardous chemicals into the river through 1987, when the last operating reactor was shut down.

Extracting plutonium from the irradiated fuel, an activity called reprocessing, generated 56 million gallons of liquid waste laced with radioactive and chemical poisons. The wastes were stored in underground tanks designed to last 25 years, based on an assumption that a disposal solution would be developed later.

Seventy-eight years after the first tank was built, that solution remains elusive. A project to vitrify, or embed tank wastes in glass for permanent disposal, has been mired in technical, managerial and political difficulties, and repeatedly threatened with cancellation.

Now, officials are considering mixing some radioactive sludges with concrete grout and shipping them elsewhere for disposal – or perhaps leaving them in the tanks. Critics regard those proposals as risky compromises. Meanwhile, an estimated 1 million gallons of liquid waste have leaked from some tanks into the ground, threatening the Columbia River, a backbone of the Pacific Northwest’s economy and ecology.

Radioactive trash still litters parts of Hanford. Irradiated bodies of laboratory animals were buried there. The site houses radioactive debris ranging from medical waste to propulsion reactors from decommissioned submarines and parts of the reactor that partially melted down at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979. Advocates for a full Hanford cleanup warn that without such a commitment, the site will become a “national sacrifice zone,” a place abandoned in the name of national security.

A culture of secrecy

As the movie “Oppenheimer” shows, government secrecy has shrouded nuclear weapons activities from their inception. Clearly, the science and technology of those weapons have dangerous potential and require careful safeguarding. But as I’ve argued previously, the principle of secrecy quickly expanded more broadly. Here again, Hanford provides an example.

Hanford’s reactor fuel was sometimes reprocessed before its most-highly radioactive isotopes had time to decay. In the 1940s and 1950s, managers knowingly released toxic gases into the air, contaminating farmlands and pastures downwind. Some releases supported an effort to monitor Soviet nuclear progress. By tracking deliberate emissions from Hanford, scientists learned better how to spot and evaluate Soviet nuclear tests.

In the mid-1980s, local residents grew suspicious about an apparent excess of illnesses and deaths in their community. Initially, strict secrecy – reinforced by the region’s economic dependence on the Hanford site – made it hard for concerned citizens to get information.

Once the curtain of secrecy was partially lifted under pressure from area residents and journalists, public outrage prompted two major health effects studies that engendered fierce controversy. By the close of the decade, more than 3,500 “downwinders” had filed lawsuits related to illnesses they attributed to Hanford. A judge finally dismissed the case in 2016 after awarding limited compensation to a handful of plaintiffs, leaving a bitter legacy of legal disputes and personal anguish.

Cautionary legacies

Currently active atomic weapons facilities also have seen their share of nuclear and toxic chemical contamination. Among them, Los Alamos National Laboratory – home to Oppenheimer’s original compound, and now a site for both military and civilian research – has contended with groundwater pollution, workplace hazards related to the toxic metal beryllium, and gaps in emergency planning and worker safety procedures.

As Nolan’s film recounts, J. Robert Oppenheimer and many other Manhattan Project scientists had deep concerns about how their work might create unprecedented dangers. Looking at the legacies of the Trinity test, I wonder whether any of them imagined the scale and scope of those outcomes.

William J. Kinsella is professor emeritus of communication at North Carolina State University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Even before the pandemic, 805 million takeout containers were dished out in Canada in 2019, as were 5.8 billion straws and 15.5 billion plastic grocery bags. Now Canada’s federal government is giving businesses until the end of 2023 to stop selling six hard-to-recycle single-use plastic items, including polystyrene and black plastic takeout containers, cutlery, grocery bags and straws. It’s an important first step that should eliminate more than 1.3 million tonnes of plastic waste, but environmental advocates point out a troubling fact: the ban is aimed at just roughly 5% of Canada’s swelling plastic stream. What about the rest of it? 

As the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) noted in its latest global plastic report, released in June, “Plastic waste is projected to almost triple by 2060, with half of all plastic waste still being landfilled and less than a fifth recycled.”

“Less than a fifth” may be a generous estimate. In late April, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a first-of-its-kind investigation into the recycling claims made by Big Oil. “For more than half a century,” Bonta said in a statement, “the plastics industry has engaged in an aggressive campaign to deceive the public, perpetuating a myth that recycling can solve the plastics crisis.”

The reality, he added, is that the vast majority of plastic cannot be recycled. The bombshell investigation was announced on the heels of a damning report released by the U.S. Department of Energy a few days earlier, which concluded that only 5% of plastic has actually been getting a second life through recycling. That’s particularly bad news considering the United States generates more plastic waste than any other country. But the whole world is having a tough time figuring out what to do with its plastic.

For more than half a century, the plastics industry has engaged in an aggressive campaign to deceive the public, perpetuating a myth that recycling can solve the plastics crisis.

–California Attorney General Rob Bonta

Fortunately, there’s also been a surge in grassroots reuse-and-refill businesses around the globe. While the refillable mugs and reusable bags of the zero-waste movement were vilified in the early days of the pandemic, they’re back on the upswing. Independent start-ups like Suppli in Toronto and DeliverZero in New York have been tackling the takeout waste crisis by offering reusable container services to local restaurants. 

Now some major fast-food chains are promising to get in on the action. 

In a partnership with TerraCycle’s circular packaging service, Loop, refillable takeout containers may be coming to a Burger King near you. At least if you live in the United Kingdom or New Jersey, where BK outlets will be trialling deposit return systems for refillable burger “clamshell” packaging, soda cups and more. In Canada, BK’s parent company, Restaurant Brands International (RBI), partnered with Loop and Tupperware Brands to pilot reusable food packaging containers for the Tim Hortons chain late last year.

RBI isn’t the only corporation scrambling to meet public commitments to shift to fully recyclable, reusable or compostable packaging by 2025. Similar pledges have been made by more than 1,000 organizations. In May, Body Shop announced that it’s reviving plans to roll out refill stations across the U.S., and Dove is now offering deodorant in slick refillable containers. Earlier this year, Coca-Cola promised to make a quarter of its beverage containers “refillable/returnable glass or plastic bottles” by 2030. 

Whether corporate efforts to introduce refillable containers go beyond novelty or pilot projects remains to be seen. On World Refill Day, June 16, more than 400 organizations released an open letter to the CEOs of five of the biggest consumer goods companies (Coca-Cola, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever and Procter and Gamble), urging them to support “transparent, ambitious and accountable reuse and refill systems.” 

In Canada, dozens of environmental groups and zero-waste businesses are calling for increased government support for reuse-and-refill initiatives. Sarah King, Greenpeace Canada’s head of oceans and plastics campaign, says that the federal government has been “stalling on fully embracing refill and reuse funding.” 

King says, “Canada will only meet its zero plastic waste by 2030 goal if it acts now to cut production of all non-essential plastics and creates a strategy to scale reuse and refill infrastructure nation-wide to accelerate a transition to truly zero waste, low carbon systems.”

The OECD agrees that bans on a “tiny share” of plastic waste will get us only so far. Its earlier February report on plastic concluded that “bans and taxes on single-use plastics exist in more than 120 countries but are not doing enough to reduce overall pollution.” The OECD is calling for “greater use of instruments such as Extended Producer Responsibility schemes for packaging and durables, landfill taxes, deposit-refund and Pay-as-You-Throw systems.”

Bans and taxes on single-use plastics exist in more than 120 countries but are not doing enough to reduce overall pollution.

–OECD

While announcing Canada’s new plastic ban June 20, Environment and Climate Change Canada didn’t mention any of the above, but the ministry did note that “moving toward a more circular economy for plastics could reduce carbon emissions by 1.8 megatonnes annually, generate billions of dollars in revenue, and create approximately 42,000 jobs by 2030.” 

In a sea of despair over rising plastic pollution, some hopeful signs are floating to the top. As of July 1, India is banning a long list of single-use plastics, including plastic wrap, cutlery and plastic sticks. Austria is mandating that 25% of beverage bottles be refillable by 2025, while Chile is mandating a 30% quota. 

Back in California, ExxonMobil put out a statement denying the attorney general’s charges that it’s been misleading the public on the recyclability of plastics: “We are focused on solutions and meritless allegations like these distract from the important collaborative work that is underway to enhance waste management and improve circularity.”

Of course, Exxon has also denied that it’s known about climate change for 40 years while spending millions on funding climate-change-denying think tanks. 

Judith Enck, president of the environmental group Beyond Plastics and a former Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator, told Inside Climate News that California’s investigation is “very significant.”

“[It has] the potential to finally hold plastic producers accountable for the immense environmental damage caused by plastics.”

A version of this article appears in the summer issue of Corporate Knights magazine. 

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The volume of medical-related waste represents a “new environmental crisis,” warns Peter Hopkinson, director of the National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research Hub (CE Hub) at the University of Exeter Business School. COVID-19 demand for single-use PPE, he adds, “has set back the substitution and replacement of medical plastic by quite a long way.”

Before the pandemic, the elimination of plastics in the ocean was a top global priority, he says. “Then came the pandemic, and suddenly it is ‘Where do I get my plastic … I don’t care where you get it from. It is a matter of life and death.’”

Like a number of global researchers, Hopkinson is conducting research to put the focus back on strategies to substitute and replace COVID-related plastic products.

Too often, he argues, plastics pollution is seen as a problem for oceans, not the climate as a whole. “People have still not really made the link between plastics and carbon; it’s basically oil,” he says. “When plastic [material] is incinerated as clinical waste, it releases carbon.”

The CE Hub explores business models that minimize reliance on non-renewable resources and maximize reuse of waste materials – the essence of circular economy principles. Since 2020, the CE Hub has worked with Revolution-ZERO, a sustainability focused provider of zero-carbon, zero-waste face masks and gowns, to pilot alternatives to single-use PPE in British hospitals. Initial results show that redesigned PPE can be safely reused 20 to 100 times before being repurposed as medical blankets or insulation curtains, complemented by staff training and special on-site laundry for holistic solutions.

[COVID-19 demand for single-use PPE] has set back the substitution and replacement of medical plastic by quite a long way.”

– Peter Hopkinson, director of the National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research Hub

Earlier this year, for its efforts to devise sustainable alternatives to disposable PPE, drapes and other surgical textiles, Revolution-ZERO was one of 10 recipients to share £1 million in funding from England’s Small Business Research Initiative.

The Exeter-led CE Hub is part of the National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research (NICER) program – a four-year, £30-million investment to move the UK toward a circular economy. In addition to the hub, the program involves 34 universities, 64 senior academics, 42 early-career researchers, more than 60 PhD students and 120 industry partners, all working to coordinate and scale that circular mission. Other related centres are focused on developing circular economy textiles, construction materials, metals and beyond.

Exeter has also introduced a Circular Economy Masterclass – a six-week, online, interactive program for organizations and individuals looking to create and deliver commercial benefits from the circular economy.

A circular economy approach is “perfectly possible, practical and profitable,” Hopkinson concludes. “It saves you a lot of money, there is no reduction in patient safety, and it is the right thing to do.”

Jennifer Lewington is an intrepid reporter and writes regularly on many topics, including business school news.

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The basis for such an agreement was made possible by growing public support for action, as well as shrinking opposition from the chemical and other industries. On top of this, there is mounting scientific evidence of plastic pollution accumulating in soils, in food and in the ocean.

What then will the treaty do? Many experts have, like myself, favoured a plastics treaty which follows a similar process to the 1987 Montreal protocol that phased out ozone-eating chemicals. In this case, a treaty would ban certain types of plastic, such as those which are single-use, or different uses of plastic such as disposable packaging, and countries would meet regularly to update this list and agree a date by which each ban would come into effect.

That is not what the resolution proposes, however. Instead, it envisages a treaty akin to the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, which addresses greenhouse gas emissions. It sets out basic objectives and allows states to set their own plans for preventing, reducing and eliminating plastic pollution.

Lobbying by the petrochemical industry and others could water down these national action plans. Whereas, if the plastics treaty followed the model provided by the Montreal protocol, states would need to demonstrate they had stopped producing or using certain plastics.

That said, if negotiating states follow the guidance of the resolution then the eventual treaty is still likely to be more precise in the obligations it sets for states to reduce plastic pollution than the vaguely worded Paris agreement does for greenhouse gas emissions. Here are four reasons why this offers cause for optimism.

1. Clear objectives and standards

The resolution sets a clear objective for the treaty: to prevent, reduce and eliminate plastic pollution. This is much harder to obfuscate than the Paris agreement’s aim of ensuring that the global average temperature does not rise 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

The resolution also directs states to adopt sound waste management practices. This is an issue that has proved difficult for all countries. The UK exports waste to be dumped in landfill sites overseas that should be recycled.

Naming the processes that states must address is helpful, as monitoring their progress is easier when all are asked to do the same thing. It’s harder under the Paris agreement to compare, for example, cuts to emissions from changes in public transport systems in one country with those from changes in the energy efficiency of appliances in another.

2. Plastic product life cycles

The resolution obliges states to regulate plastic at each stage in a product’s life cycle. This is much more advanced than the approach taken in the Paris agreement, which makes no mention of products or processes that create greenhouse gas emissions (such as fossil fuels) and leaves states free to determine how they reduce their emissions.

Under the plastics resolution, states will adopt regulations which require manufacturers to design plastic products that can be reused, remade or recycled. States will also be expected to plan for what happens to products once consumers no longer want or need to use them. Products manufactured in future, such as mobile phones and laptops, would need to be designed so that they can be repaired more easily.

The emphasis on designing plastic products to be reused or recycled means that the future agreement will probably also include a commitment to phasing out single-use items made from plastics wherever possible. There is no equivalent provision in the Paris agreement.

3. Existing plastic pollution

No existing treaties are designed to clean up pollution. Instead, they tend to focus on controlling future emissions. Yet this resolution suggests states should cooperate to remove plastic from the ocean. They may do so through taking action within their territorial seas or choose to create an international body which can oversee the removal of plastics.

4. Knowledge

Given the ubiquity of plastic products and pollution, no one sector can solve the problem. The resolution asks a range of people and organisations to contribute knowledge about how to prevent plastic accumulating in the environment, including the scientific community, traditional and indigenous knowledge holders and industry experts.

The Paris agreement includes a similar request with regards to adapting to climate change. But the resolution for a plastics treaty takes this further by asking people to contribute to mitigating the problem with suggestions for policy relevant to each stage of a plastic product’s life cycle.

Scientists and indigenous scholars may, for example, inform treaty negotiators of the full extent of plastic pollution in ecosystems and help identify design principles for products. Industries may report on the challenges of producing new plastics and of ensuring they can be reused, while local government officials might suggest how the challenges preventing people from recycling it can be overcome.

Will the treaty be a success?

It’s difficult to say whether the treaty will lead to a substantial reduction in plastic pollution. But the resolution’s deference to national leadership need not undermine the treaty’s success. Unlike the Paris agreement, the resolution contains more proposals that are likely to support the implementation of a global agreement.

The speed at which the international community has recognised this issue is encouraging. There is much to do, but the resolution is a step in the right direction.

Elizabeth Kirk is a professor of international environmental law at the University of Lincoln.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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These barriers to repair are no accident. Market power and intellectual property rights have enabled manufacturers to unilaterally determine when, where (and at what cost) and by whom their products can be fixed. This is why many were surprised last month when technology giant Apple announced that it will be launching its Self Service Repair program, offering customers the ability to access the company’s proprietary parts and tools. 

Long regarded as the primary villain against the “right to repair” for its aggressive lobbying, Apple’s announcement signals a sea change is coming. Though the details of the program are yet to be released, Apple now joins the likes of Microsoft, Samsung and other technology companies in making an industry-led commitment to better allow us to fix our own stuff.

But what to make of these commitments? Are they right-to-repair wins, or are there reasons for skepticism? There is undoubtedly good news contained within these commitments, but campaigners are wise to look beyond mere “permission to repair” and keep pressing for the right.

Apple’s announcement arrives as a burgeoning global movement of right-to-repair advocates has been fighting for legal and policy changes to enable us to take repair into our own hands. Increased repairability enables secondary markets for repair and servicing, extends product lifespan to reduce environmental impacts, and distributes technical knowledge throughout society. These benefits are increasingly relevant in the context of today’s growing wealth inequality, the importance of developing a knowledge economy, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s declaration of an environmental “code red for humanity.”

Promising grassroots efforts toward policy reform have also begun to materialize around the world. Hard-fought right-to-repair wins include an executive order signed by U.S. President Joe Biden this summer, a string of U.S. state-level repair bills, EU regulatory measures mandating access to repair information and parts, and Canadian provincial and federal bills targeting warranties and protections for digital locks under copyright law. Most recently, the Australian Productivity Commission has released a report wholly endorsing increased repairability and a suite of legislative and regulatory changes to enable it. 

If technology companies wish to embrace repair, they should not stand in the way of the legal and policy changes sought by right-to-repair campaigners.

While the winds are blowing increasingly in the direction of repair, Apple’s Self Service Repair program might not be as altruistic as it seems. Taken at their worst, these commitments may be little more than “repair-washing” – an attempt to shape the narrative around repair and technology manufacturers that is increasingly becoming a public relations liability for these companies. It remains to be seen whether the commitments will meaningfully address the economic, environmental and social costs of un-repairability.

Back in 2019, Nathan Proctor, the head of U.S. Public Interest Research Groups’ Right to Repair campaign, warned that the repair movement was being hijacked by the very companies that sought to preclude it. Citing efforts to increase the number of Samsung-authorized repairers at the time, Proctor wrote: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you … But then, as a last ditch effort, they co-opt you.” Right-to-repair campaigners would be wise to keep Proctor’s words front of mind these days.

It would be disingenuous to not grant these commitments some applause, though. Co-opting or not, there is reason for optimism. Industry norms can be as powerful as law and policy, and the market power wielded by Apple alone shows the potential for shaping those norms toward increased consumer choice and market competition in repair. No matter how you slice it, these commitments count as progress. 

But the “permission to repair” will never amount to a right. Right-to-repair goals cannot be meaningfully achieved through self-regulation alone. These commitments are effectively a type of charity. They amount to a promise by manufacturers not to rigidly enforce their intellectual property and contractual rights. That is extraordinarily helpful and important but not the whole story. As right-to-repair advocate Cory Doctorow wrote in a recent article for OneZero, campaigners would be right to “keep their eye on the prize.”

If technology companies wish to embrace repair, they should not stand in the way of the legal and policy changes sought by right-to-repair campaigners. To cultivate a meaningful and participatory repair culture, we need to create public-interest exceptions to the exclusive intellectual property rights and market power exercised by these firms. These allow them to keep their tight grip on repair, and far beyond mere permission, this is what would give us the “right” to repair.

At its core, the right-to-repair movement is rooted in an ethos that holds a deep belief in human potential. Repair is not merely about mending broken things or making them whole. It also enables inquiry, discovery, devising new solutions and the dissemination of collective knowledge. Having the largest technology manufacturers in support of repair is a good thing, but the keys to repair should be held by all of us.

Anthony Rosborough is a lawyer, doctoral researcher in intellectual property law at the European University Institute, and founder of the Canadian Repair Coalition.

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