The second meeting on a possible international treaty on plastic pollution takes place this week at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Recycling is often touted as a solution to reducing plastic waste, but recent studies show the process poses its own risks and is no match for soaring plastic production.
The scale of plastic pollution is growing, relentlessly. The world is producing twice as much plastic waste as two decades ago, reaching 353 million tonnes in 2019, according to OECD figures.
