Plastics treaty: Address building materials | Science

The final planned negotiation session of the Global Plastics Treaty will take place from 25 November to 1 December in Busan, Republic of Korea (1). Negotiators hope to provide the treaty’s future signatories with internationally, legally binding obligations that can effectively mitigate plastic pollution. Most discussions so far have focused on the largest category of plastics: packaging and single-use products (2). However, effective strategies must also address the second-largest global plastic category: building and construction materials, which accounted for 17% of plastic use in 2019 (3). Without intervention, demands for plastic building materials are projected to nearly double by 2050 to 150 million metric tonnes, a quantity that would surpass the 2019 level of plastic packaging production (4). The Global Plastics Treaty must include commitments to reduce plastics used in construction.