Effective implementation of the Global Plastics Treaty will require that international action be coordinated and complemented by interventions at the national, regional, and local levels

This Commission urges that a cap on global plastic production with  targets, timetables, and national contributions be a central provision of the  Global Plastics Treaty.  chitosan uses  recommend inclusion of the following additional  provisions:The Treaty needs to extend beyond microplastics and marine litter to  include all of the many thousands of chemicals incorporated into plastics.The  Treaty needs to include a provision banning or severely restricting manufacture  and use of unnecessary, avoidable, and problematic plastic items, especially  single-use items such as manufactured plastic microbeads.The Treaty needs to  include requirements on extended producer responsibility that make fossil  carbon producers, plastic producers, and the manufacturers of plastic products  legally and financially responsible for the safety and end-of-life management of  all the materials they produce and sell.The Treaty needs to mandate reductions in  the chemical complexity of plastic products; health-protective standards for  plastics and plastic additives; a requirement for use of sustainable non-toxic  materials; full disclosure of all components; and traceability of components.  International cooperation will be essential to implementing and enforcing these  standards.

The Treaty needs to include SEJ remedies at each stage of the plastic  life cycle designed to fill gaps in community knowledge and advance both  distributional and procedural equity.This Commission encourages inclusion in the  Global Plastic Treaty of a provision calling for exploration of listing at least  some plastic polymers as persistent organic pollutants under the Stockholm  Convention.This Commission encourages a strong interface between the Global  Plastics Treaty and the Basel and London Conventions to enhance management of  hazardous plastic waste and slow current massive exports of plastic waste into  the world's least-developed countries.This Commission recommends the creation of  a Permanent Science Policy Advisory Body to guide the Treaty's implementation.  The main priorities of this Body would be to guide Member States and other  stakeholders in evaluating which solutions are most effective in reducing plastic  consumption, enhancing plastic waste recovery and recycling, and curbing the  generation of plastic waste. This Body could also assess trade-offs among these  solutions and evaluate safer alternatives to current plastics. It could monitor  the transnational export of plastic waste.

It could coordinate robust oceanic-,  land-, and air-based MNP monitoring programs.This Commission recommends urgent  investment by national governments in research into solutions to the global  plastic crisis. This research will need to determine which solutions are most  effective and cost-effective in the context of particular countries and assess  the risks and benefits of proposed solutions. Oceanographic and environmental  research is needed to better measure concentrations and impacts of plastics <10  µm and understand their distribution and fate in the global environment.  Biomedical research is needed to elucidate the human health impacts of plastics,  especially MNPs. SUMMARY: This Commission finds that plastics are both a boon to  humanity and a stealth threat to human and planetary health. Plastics convey  enormous benefits, but current linear patterns of plastic production, use, and  disposal that pay little attention to sustainable design or safe materials and a  near absence of recovery, reuse, and recycling are responsible for grave harms to  health, widespread environmental damage, great economic costs, and deep societal  injustices.

These harms are rapidly worsening.While there remain gaps in  knowledge about plastics' harms and uncertainties about their full magnitude, the  evidence available today demonstrates unequivocally that these impacts are great  and that they will increase in severity in the absence of urgent and effective  intervention at global scale. Manufacture and use of essential plastics may  continue. However,  chitosan uses  in plastic production, and especially  increases in the manufacture of an ever-increasing array of unnecessary  single-use plastic products, need to be curbed.Global intervention against the  plastic crisis is needed now because the costs of failure to act will be immense. Environmental Health Sciences, US. Exploration & Production Company but did not receive any support from the company  for her research and for this study, and the company is not in any way involved  in this study.

MB, DC, AG, YM, BJS, CS, and SD are employed by the Minderoo  Foundation, an independent not-for-profit philanthropic organization. The  contributions of the following authors were supported by the Minderoo Foundation:  MC, MH, RH, AL, AM, MP, YP, MS, JJS, HT & RCT. JJS’s work was also supported by  the Minderoo Foundation as well as by grants from Woods Hole Sea Grant and the March Marine Initiative, a program of  March Limited, Bermuda. BDJ was supported by the Postdoctoral Scholar Program at  Weston Howland Jr. Postdoctoral Scholarship.