Closing the taps

Establishing effective global governance on plastic pollution remains a difficult journey, due to the pervasive use of the material in modern life

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, the world produces over 430 million tons of new plastic every year. If that trend continues at the current pace, the production level will be approximately triple in 2060. Just a year ago, negotiators walked away from Geneva without a global plastics treaty. It was a setback, though an entirely predictable one. Addressing global environmental challenges usually requires a long-term journey across different steps including agenda-setting, raising policy discussions, negotiating solutions, establishing international law and implementing policies. While global policymakers and stakeholders have paid attention to plastic pollution issues, the evolution of global plastic pollution governance reflects the complicated global environmental politics.

Identifying a single, clear and concrete target remains difficult and complex in plastic pollution governance. Unlike other global environmental challenges, global actions on addressing plastic pollution have been locked in a range of different definitions and understandings of plastics-related issues and solutions. For instance, while climate change governance similarly has encountered various difficulties, it has a very clear and consistent goal of limiting the average global temperature rise to 1.5 C. This objective does not compromise itself simply because we have been witnessing heatwaves and extreme weather events across the planet.

In the context of global plastic pollution, however, the scope and definitions of plastics have been interpreted very differently by various state actors and stakeholders. It is difficult to filter the specific plastic materials to be controlled and restrained. According to a 2025 report by the OECD, packaging is a main sector consuming plastics, representing 32 percent of global plastics use followed by construction (15 percent) and transportation (12 percent). Plastic accounts for nearly 60 percent of clothing materials such as polyester, acrylic and nylon. They are daily-life products and important materials for supporting human life. In the negotiations, which types of plastics and to what extent actions are required remain ambiguous and contentious. This has led to deadlock in the plastics negotiations.

A variety of stakeholder roles — including producers, consumers, investors, exporters, importers and polluters — has further fragmented global plastic pollution governance and aggravated the dichotomy between developed and developing countries by redistributing the differences along value chains. The North-South gap persists in mapping global environmental governance and redistributing environmental responsibilities. Consequently, the criteria for responsibility distribution become harder to discern and demarcate.

For instance, while widely embedded in various environmental policies, the principle of the polluter pays has been inappropriate in the case of plastic pollution, as it unduly forces developing countries to undertake the main responsibility for addressing plastic pollution. The principle of Extended Producer Responsibility has instead been introduced in order to shift the responsible actors from the marine polluters to the plastic producers. But, plastic production has been closely linked to plastic manufacturers and producers of fossil fuels. The fundamental industrial structures of many developing countries matter here.

Developed countries should not shirk their responsibilities for leading actions on controlling plastic pollution by labeling developing countries as the producers and polluters. A very clear fact is that Western countries have long invested in plastics-related industries, achieved economic growth and industrialization, and enjoyed a modern plastic-based lifestyle. A range of leading global companies in plastic manufacturing are located in the United States and European countries. Particularly, many of the recycled plastic wastes are traded to developing countries in the name of the circular economy. For instance, Japan, Spain and Germany were the three largest exporters of plastic waste to Malaysia in 2023, accounting for 33 percent, 17 percent and 16 percent of its total imports respectively, according to 2025 Environment Working Papers of the OECD.

The emerging architecture of global plastic governance must therefore coordinate with the diverse array of existing international institutions already addressing plastic pollution. Functionally, any proposed global plastics treaty will have to engage with established instruments such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships and the Plastic Waste Amendments to the Basel Convention. These existing frameworks are primarily designed to control marine plastic pollution and regulate the global trade of plastic waste, rather than addressing plastic production and consumption at source. As a result, competing or conflicting functions may arise between the proposed treaty and these institutional arrangements.

Institutionally, the global governance structure requires a more coherent and coordinated model of cooperation. Horizontally, the institutional arrangements of global plastic governance require their coordination with a range of existing international environmental institutions such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions (BRS conventions). This alignment is essential because plastic pollution is intrinsically linked to other global environmental challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and the management of chemicals and hazardous waste. Vertically, national and regional proactive measures — such as plastic bag fees and waste import bans — are increasingly being adopted, while subnational efforts concentrate on local priorities such as urban waste management. A consistent framework linking top-down guidance with bottom-up action remains significant for governance alignment.

China is making important contributions to plastic governance. It issued a restriction on importing solid waste including plastic waste in 2017. This policy led to a sharp decline in China's plastic waste, reshaping the global plastic waste trade. Domestically, China released the Action Plan for Plastic Pollution Control of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) in 2021. On Aug 15, China's Ecological and Environmental Code took effect. This code has clear rules banning and restricting the production, sales and use of single-use plastic products.

As an example of the globally recognized full-life-cycle approach for plastics, China launched the world's first 200,000 ton per year plastic recycling plant in Jieyang, Guangdong province, in July 2025. Various efforts to address plastic pollution have also been made across multi-level governance frameworks and different sectors.

The European Union has taken decisive action adopting the European Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy in 2018, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations issued its Regional Action Plan for Combating Marine Debris in 2021. These institutional efforts are positive measures to control plastic pollution, but they remain insufficient to establish effective global plastic pollution governance.

The metaphor of "mopping the floor while the tap is still on" has rightly captured the frustration at the heart of the plastics treaty talks. Yet the reality is even more complex. There is not one tap but many — production, consumption, markets, investments, waste and trade — and each is controlled by different actors and embedded in different governance systems. To shut them off one by one is not enough; what is needed is a coherent global framework that integrates upstream controls with downstream management, reconciles the North-South divide along the value chain and bridges existing institutional mandates with the new treaty's ambitions. Only by redesigning the system itself, rather than chasing each leak separately, can the world move from metaphor to mandate — and finally keep the floor dry.

The author is an associate professor at the Institute of International Relations at China Foreign Affairs University.

The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn.