Sustainable Bites 1.11.23

Held in Dubai, COP28 – the latest round of UN global climate negotiations – will kick off at the end of November, focusing on the gaps in the implementation of the 2015 Paris Agreement. In September, a stocktake report by the UN said the world was behind on progress towards climate targets, demanding action from every country to keep global temperature increases within 1.5˚C.

At a recent briefing in Beijing, Head of the Climate Office at China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment Xia Yingxian called for countries to refrain from empty words and instead implement a practical approach to climate change, saying that developed countries “have an unshirkable responsibility for global climate change and at the same time have the actual ability to deal with climate change”.

EU caged farming ban put on hold

A joint investigation by the Guardian, Italy’s IrpiMedia, and a media consortium led by Lighthouse Reports has uncovered how meat lobby groups aggressively pushed back on a proposed EU ban on the caged farming of animals like hens and pigs, which has now been put on hold – despite the majority of EU citizens supporting the ban.

In 2021 – following a petition from 1.5 million people across Europe – the EU endorsed a resolution that would ban caged farming. In early 2023, the EU Commission officially committed to set out a legislative proposal, which was set to go through by the end of this year. The laws included would abolish keeping farm animals in cages, slaughtering day-old chicks and the sale and production of fur. In September, an EU survey found that 89% of citizens were still in support of this.

Three EU officials allege that European Livestock Voice (ELV) and its partner associations pushed back to water down parts of the laws and attack scientific opinions that didn’t align with their goals. One has described it as the first time in a decade-long career that they felt such intensive pressure from a farming group.

Anja Hazekamp, Vice-Chair of the EU Parliament’s environment committee, said: “Industry fought really hard and dirty on this file. They tried everything they could think of because they know we desperately need animal welfare legislation to make our food system more sustainable and humane, and this was their last chance. They don’t want to change, but see that change is inevitable so they’re getting desperate. They will do anything to save their skins.”

Research consistently shows that EU citizens care about animal farming regulations and are even willing to pay more for products created under higher standards of welfare standards – things like providing animals with more space to move around, better housing conditions, and shorter transport journeys.

The deadline set by the EU to enforce the bans has now been missed. Aside from legislation around the transportation of animals due to be proposed before the end of 2023, the rest have been scrapped from the Commission’s work programme for next year.

European plastics plan largely ignores need for reduction and reuse

Plastics Europe – the trade body representing 90% of Europe’s plastic producers – has published plans to reduce emissions and to increase circularity by 2050, without any targets for decreasing production rates or increasing rates of reuse. 

The Plastics Transition document includes a 28% reduction in lifecycle emissions by 2030 (from 2019 levels), building to a 55% reduction by 2050. It says that residual emissions could be addressed using a mix of offsetting and onsite carbon capture and storage technologies. This is modest compared to the Science-Based Targets initiative’s Corporate Net-Zero Standard, which calls for companies to commit to a 90% reduction in absolute emissions across all scopes by 2050 at the latest.

At present, more than 80% of the feedstocks used to produce plastics are fossil-based. Plastics Europe believes this proportion could be brought down to 35% in 2050, envisaging mechanically and chemically recycled plastics accounting for almost half of production – a strategy that relies heavily on assumed rapid scaling of these technologies. The plan is also reliant on rapid growth in bioplastics, and on plastics made using captured carbon becoming commercially available at scale in the 2030s.

While UNEP’s roadmap for slashing global plastic pollution rates by 80% by 2040 does note the importance of scaling both mechanical and chemical recycling, it also includes a 10% reduction in the production of short-lived plastics products by 2027, with at least 20% of these replaced with reusables and the rest with alternative materials.

The Plastics Transition plan does acknowledge that reuse is likely to increase in the coming decades – but it sets no specific targets in terms of reducing production and increasing reuse, including neither as a key indicator of circularity. The Plastics Europe website maintains that “plastics remain irreplaceable for many applications”. 

Zero Pollution policy manager at Zero Waste Europe Janek Vähk said: "In a stark contradiction to the urgent need for sustainability, the Plastics Europe roadmap for Plastics in Europe advocates for the unabated expansion of plastic production and a continued reliance on fossil-based plastics (one-third of the production). Our latest research [...] reveals a stark reality: to align with these budgets, the demand for plastics cannot grow. Instead, we must pivot towards a future where plastic consumption decreases by 3% each year, ultimately halving annual consumption by 2050. The majority of this transition should be achieved through the elimination of unnecessary plastics and a steady fast move towards a thriving reuse economy."