Abstract
Unsustainable production and consumption patterns of single use plastics are causing worldwide negative environmental and socioeconomic impacts on land-based and marine ecosystems. Nevertheless, in Latin America, plastics governance is still fragmented across borders because of dispersed normative adoption and limited regional coordination. In this context, the instrumental level of articulation between the international principles of environmental law and the formal legal arrangements from the Pacific Alliance countries is assessed to analyze how this strategic platform can contribute to offering a regional response to the global problem of single use plastics. For this purpose, an illustrative case study of the national and subnational regulation developed by the Pacific Alliance and its members was performed. To this end, a framework analysis was conducted on the official legal documents from Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Ecuador. The results show extensive and scattered subnational regulation to control the consumption of plastic bags and single use plastics, with diverse policies on extended producer responsibility, educational and economic strategies to influence mainly the consumer’s behaviour. Recommendations are presented in order to improve plastics governance in the region through the legal component.
Highlights
The production of plastics has increased twentyfold since the 1960s [1], reaching 280 million tons in 2016 [2]
The results showed that in the case of plastic bags, 66% of the countries had adopted some form of legislation, mostly related to a ban on free retail distribution; fourteen of those countries were from Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)
Almost every regulation analyzed in the Pacific Alliance (PA) mentions an initial justification of environmental and health risks associated with unsustainable production and consumption patterns of single use plastics (SUP)
Summary
The production of plastics has increased twentyfold since the 1960s [1], reaching 280 million tons in 2016 [2]. By 2050, there will be around 12 billion tons of plastic litter in landfills and the environment [6], which will account for 20% of total oil consumption and 15% of the global annual carbon budget [7]. In this context, single use plastics (SUP) play a critical role because they represent around one-third of the plastic produced [8]. SUP present several challenges for end of life (EoL) treatment: SUP are disposable, generally difficult to recycle due to the complexity of chemical additives [10], and made of low-density plastic polymers so they float in the oceans [11], becoming a potential risk for marine organisms [12,13]
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