On Wednesday, 175 United Nations agreed to begin writing a legally-binding treaty to address the global plastic pollution crisis by 2024.
Decided this week at the biannual session of the United Nations Environment Assembly—the highest-level global environmental decision-making body—in Nairobi, Kenya, the agreement establishes an aim to create a negotiating committee that will spend the next two years developing an instrument on plastic pollution. Though the terms of the agreement are relatively open-ended, the resolution points toward addressing pollution across all stages of the plastic life cycle, including production, consumption, and in…