Six Insiders Detail "Total Infiltration" Of Plastics Treaty Talks By Industry Reps: "Complete Bad Faith Negotiation"
Being surrounded and yelled at about “misrepresenting reality” is not how serious United Nations-hosted negotiations are meant to proceed. But that is what happened to Prof Bethanie Carney Almroth during talks about a global treaty to slash plastic pollution in Ottawa, Canada. The employees of a large US chemicals company “formed a ring” around her, she says. At another event in Ottawa, Carney Almroth was “harassed and intimidated” by a plastic packaging representative, who barged into the room and shouted that she was fearmongering and pushing misinformation. That meeting was an official event organised by the UN. “So I filed the harassment reports with the UN,” said Carney Almroth. “The guy had to apologise, and then he left the meeting. He was at the next meeting.”
“That was one example when I filed an official report,” said Carney Almroth, an ecotoxicologist from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. “But I’ve been harassed and intimidated lots of other times, in lots of other contexts, at off-site meetings, at side events, also at scientific conferences, via email and so on.” She has also had to take measures to avoid surveillance at the meetings. “I have a privacy screen protector on my phone, because they will walk behind us and try to film what’s on our screens and see what notes we’re taking, or who we’re chatting with. I would never open my computer in the middle of a room without knowing who is behind me. It’s a high-vigilance, high-stress environment.”
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(Ed. - UNEP Director Inger) Andersen was accused of an “inappropriate absence of ambition” by more than 100 environmental organisations in April 2023. They also expressed concern about a “lack of transparency regarding who is advising [her] work and the [treaty] secretariat”, which is the group of Unep officials who manage the talks. She was criticised in particular for a statement perceived to undermine the importance of a cap on plastic production, made in September 2024: “We have to have a more refined conversation than just cap [or] no cap, because it’s not an intelligent conversation.” A reduction in production should focus on raw polymer for single use, short-lived products, not “car parts and plane wings”, she said. Critics said her statement contradicted scientific evidence that the environmental impact of plastics begins with extraction and production, not just their use.
The environmental organisations complained to Andersen’s boss, the UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, in October 2024, saying they had “deep concerns” that her public statements would “narrow the scope” of the treaty and that she had exceeded her role as convener of the negotiations. They did not receive a reply. It was also alleged at the most recent negotiating round, in Busan, South Korea, in December, that Andersen had put pressure on high-ambition countries to give way on their demands for a strong treaty with a cap on plastic production. Andersen responded at the time, saying: “I will meet with everyone at every stage of the way and I will obviously meet the member states and hear them out, from [across] the entire spectrum of the 193 [countries].”
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/23/total-infiltration-how-plastics-industry-swamped-vital-global-treaty-talks