Combating Plastic Pollution in International Law: Lex Lata and Lex Ferenda

Abstract

Global plastic production increased from 1.5 million tons in 1950 to 390 million tons in 2021, of which only 9% was recycled, 19% was incinerated, almost 50% was disposed of in landfills and 22% was dumped in areas where this waste could be openly burned or released back into the environment. Plastics have changed the global economy and the lives of billions of people for the better. However, their use comes with significant environmental and social costs. Plastic waste negatively affects human health and the environment. The life cycle of plastics covers the entire spectrum of activities, from raw material extraction, production, distribution, and use, to its disposal as waste, and environmental problems can arise at any stage of the plastic life cycle. Most plastic degrades very slowly in the environment. There are currently a number of international commitments to reduce marine litter and plastic waste, particularly from land-based sources, as well as several applicable international agreements and soft law instruments related to trade in plastics or reducing impacts on marine life. However, none of the international documents provides a global, mandatory, specific, and measurable targets for reducing plastic pollution. In this regard, many states, as well as commercial actors and civil society, are calling for the adoption of a global instrument to regulate marine pollution from litter and plastics. In this article, significant attention is paid to the analysis of a future treaty aimed at combating plastic pollution.

This study is based on the analysis of a large volume of materials, including international legal acts, advisory acts, and modern doctrinal studies by Russian and foreign authors. The methodological basis of the study was general scientific (logical and systemic analysis, dialectical method, methods of deduction and induction) and special scientific (historical-legal, comparative-legal, formal legal methods, legal modelling and forecasting), and methods of cognition.

In the course of the study, various international acts of a mandatory and recommendatory nature were analysed, the doctrinal positions set out in the scientific literature and put forward by domestic and foreign legal scholars were summarized, and the main problems of combating plastic pollution were identified.

Within the framework of this article, an attempt has been made to give answers to the following questions: To what extent is the problem of plastic pollution an important challenge for modern international law? Does current international law effectively regulate the problem of plastic pollution? What should the content of a new treaty on plastic be? And what are the positions of states on the content of such a treaty?