How the Plastics Industry Invaded the UN’s “Plastic Free” Conference

When ProPublica environment reporter Lisa Song attended this “plastic free” United Nations conference in April, where plastics treaty negotiations were taking place, she didn’t even get a see-through sleeve for her nametag. She’d have to reuse an old lanyard, they told her.
After all, representatives from roughly 170 countries were gathering to tackle a crisis: The world churns out 400 million metric tons of plastic a year.
But as the conference progressed, Song came to understand just how hard it would be for attendees to achieve any meaningful action on the world’s plastic pollution crisis. In fact, some attendees didn’t think there was anything wrong with plastic at all. Watch Song walk us through some shocking pro-plastic ads she saw at this “plastic free” UN conference.
Read our full story at: propub.li/3ziG6e2
#plastic #plastics #microplastics #plasticpollution #plasticfree #plastictreaty #environment #environmentalissues #unitednations
-
ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force.
+ Donate to support our work: propub.li/3WE9AMv
+ Sign up for our weekly newsletter: propub.li/2oyN8DY
+ Follow us on X/Twitter: / propublica
+ Follow us on Instagram: / propublica
+ Follow us on TikTok: / propublica
+ Follow us on Facebook: / propublica
+ Follow us on Threads: www.threads.ne...
+ Follow us on Mastodon: newsie.social/...
+ Follow us on Bluesky: bsky.app/profi...
+ Join our WhatsApp broadcast channel: propub.li/what...

[@EvolutionWendy]

Plastics misinformation can be stopped, like tobacco misinformingwas finally stopped by law, misinformation on oil and oil-products must be squelches. citizens outrage!!

[@brendasmart553]

Trickery with fear & biased misinfo! Bad on the industry doing this obvious money goaled scam!

[@Cineenvenordquist]

Pols to the conf not looking super green chemistry forward and stoic but also not... buying the other placement walls etc. w. Scots Peat biorefineries, Irish Double for '25: clover cladding, suchforth.

[@DearProfessorRF]

Greenwashing by the fossil fuel industry at its best.

[@xChimkin]

this is why i'm like cut the crap, let's ACTUALLY return to precovid days already

[@JaySmith91]

Plastics is just another branch of the oil industry. Same at every single COP climate change conference; the message is completely subverted by the Fossil Fuel and Agriculture giants; now the modal average attendee is a Fossil Fuel interest, not any nation or environmental group; The hosts are now Fossil Fuel interests; The last COP 28 was held in Dubai whose leaders have no plans of decreasing oil and gas production. The science says we must reduce fossil fuel extraction, and reduce meat consumption, but these lofty goals will never be achieved when the most powerful groups can blatantly commandeer conferences and subvert global narrative. It's a sad joke. COP could call itself the Ministry of Environmental Protection, as if we were living inside the pages of Nineteen Eighty-Four. It's dystopian.

[@eh3477]

Absolutely right. However other nations and attendees could protest the greenwashing, and they don't.

[@Cineenvenordquist]

Ofc it shouldn't be, your country (region, unions etc.) can't gain from plastic in dumps and freshwater v. recycling to biodegradable formulation (or green designs for fuels cracking, parallel tracks for urban forestry and lignin/cellulose/lumber uses, glass & minerals...this glass saves lives tch.) was it not chemist/process driven? It's like here, go nuts with these carbohydrates and safer polyols, that won't clog your nuts. (The gonads w. microplastics.) Go on and de-grow the broken design cruft single sourced from carbon leakeries.

[@Bunkerdwarfputin]

A conference set up to launder money. Got it.

[@etienne8110]

The thing is: plastics are indeed usefull. Thus why it s all the harder to stop using them (like fossils). Plus studies on the effects of plastics on humans are few, on low numbers etc... Despite those studies being VERY worrying, i have little hope to see any regulation banning plastics before microplastics are present everywhere.

[@diegomontoya796]

Great work on covering truth in reality. Pro publica is pro paganda.