STORY: :: Greenpeace activists board a tanker set to load plastic chemicals amid U.N. plastic talks
:: Greenpeace
:: Off coast of South Korea
:: November 30, 2024
:: Lisa Ramsden, Greenpeace USA
“We’re here today to urge world leaders who are negotiating the final draft of a new Global Plastics Treaty in Busan to seize this once in a generation opportunity and secure a strong global plastics treaty that will cut out of control plastic production. We need our governments to listen to public opinion, to science and to progressive businesses, and deliver an ambitious treaty that will cut plastic production.”
Video released by Greenpeace showed four activists equipped with protective safety gear, boarding a tanker set to load plastic chemicals from a South Korean company. The activists climbed on the mast to attach a banner reading “strong plastic treaty”. The Greenpeace activists were also seen painting a message reading “plastic kills” on the exterior of the tanker.
South Korea is hosting delegates from about 175 countries at the fifth and final meeting of the U.N. Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) to agree globally binding rules on plastics, but this week’s talks have moved at a glacial pace.
A document outlining a treaty, issued by committee chair Luis Vayas Valdivieso on Friday (November 29), featured ideas such as a global list of plastic products to be managed and a financial mechanism to help fund developing countries’ action on the treaty. It left it up to countries’ voluntary decisions to take a range of possible actions on plastic products and left undecided how rich nations would contribute to a fund.