Delegations from 193 countries met in Uruguay to work on a draft international agreement to support the elimination of plastic pollution with the goal of keeping this material “in the economy, not in the environment.”
The Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Inger Andersen, on Monday stressed the relevance of the agreement aimed at achieving this summit, which is taking place in the Uruguayan city of Punta del Este.
“The meeting in Punta del Este is extremely important. This is a round of negotiations in which countries will seek agreement, ”the specialist emphasized at a press conference.
Inger Andersen emphasized that the focus is not on the complete rejection of plastic, but on its removal from the environment and recycling of this material.
“We are very dependent on plastic, everyone has it at home, it is a useful product, we need it. We are not necessarily against plastic, but we are against plastic in the environment. we use the land, we save it in the economy,” he stressed.
Andersen, who is in Uruguay to attend the First Meeting of the International Plastics Agreement Committee, which runs from last Saturday and ends on Friday, stressed that while this dependence is one of the main obstacles in the way, there are many stakeholders with the goal of moving from ” create, use and discard” to “create, use and reuse”.
“We asked if major logistics or shipping companies are willing to recycle the materials they use to ship packaging, and the answer is yes, many companies are willing to do so. in the waters, so there is a predisposition,” he analyzed, referring to large companies.
After attending an event in Punta del Este, where Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou also spoke, Andersen held a meeting in Montevideo with various local ministers.
This international event, which is part of the first meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-1), aims to develop a legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, UNEP explained.