The UN Plastics Treaty Must Confront Fossil Fuel Power

The United Nations Plastics Treaty is billed as the world’s best chance to tackle plastic pollution, but unless it confronts the power of the fossil fuel industry, it risks becoming little more than a recycling plan with a new logo.

With over 99% of plastics being made from oil and gas, the reality is that plastic is the fossil fuel industry’s plan B. As the world is under pressure to transition away from fossil fuels, oil and petrochemical giants are doubling down on plastics to secure their profits and perpetuate a destructive business model for decades to come. Industry projections show plans to dramatically expand plastic production—locking in emissions just as climate scientists warn we must phase out fossil fuels. Already, plastics account for around 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Without intervention, that figure could double by 2050 as plastics rise to account for 20% of global oil and gas consumption.

This is why the U.N. Plastics Treaty negotiations are a critical moment in the broader fight to reduce pollution, put a cap on greenhouse gas emissions, and fight for climate justice. Cutting plastic production is not only vital to cleaning up oceans and coastal areas, but is also about dismantling a key pillar of the fossil fuel economy.

Yet, the same corporations that created this crisis have infiltrated the process meant to solve it. Hundreds of industry lobbyists have attended the treaty talks, working to strip away any mention of production limits. Over 200 industry lobbyists are in attendance at this year’s negotiations. Their preferred outcome is clear: a weak agreement focused solely on waste management, leaving the root cause untouched.

If the world truly wants to end plastic pollution, it must start by ending the unchecked production of plastic itself.

The human cost of bowing to the influence and demands of the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry is well known. From frontline communities across Asia, Africa, and Latin America to the infamous “Cancer alley” in the United States, plastics poison air, water, and soil, disproportionately harming low-income, Black, brown, and Indigenous communities. In the Global South, countries bear the additional burden of waste colonialism: imported waste they did not create. Just like the climate crisis, this is a story of systemic exploitation: profits for a few, toxic impacts for the many.

The fossil fuel and petrochemical industry’s false solutions to the crisis only deepen this injustice. Recycling rates remain negligible, and new schemes like “plastic credits” mimic the failures of carbon markets—financial smokescreens that do nothing to reduce production. These false solutions keep the burden off the culprits, shifting focus to only the very end of the plastics lifecycle rather than tackling every stage of it. Embracing these false solutions means entrenching the problem rather than solving it.

What’s needed is unequivocal: a legally binding cap on plastic production. Anything less leaves fossil fuel companies with an open runway to continue extracting, refining, and polluting. Such a cap would not only curb emissions and pollution, but would set a precedent for challenging corporate power in other arenas of the climate crisis.

The treaty negotiators face a clear choice and responsibility. They can side with the communities poisoned by plastics, the workers demanding a just transition, and the growing global movement to end pollution and secure climate justice. Or they can allow the fossil fuel industry to hijack yet another international agreement, leaving future generations to choke on its consequences.

If the world truly wants to end plastic pollution, it must start by ending the unchecked production of plastic itself. Delegates can engage in the path of a just transition and true system change that centers people and the planet, sending a strong message to the fossil fuel industry that its time is long gone and its hijacking of agreements and treaties is over. Anything less is not enough.