Break Free From Plastic Youth Statement
on the Global Plastics Treaty

We, members of Break Free From Plastic Youth, are joining the call for the adoption of a strong legally binding treaty on plastic pollution, covering measures to effectively stop the polluting cycle of plastics -- from the extraction of fossil fuels, to the use of toxic and life threatening chemicals in their production, all the way to their disposal where they cause grave and irreversible damage to our ecosystems, to our wildlife, and to human health. The pollution caused by plastics throughout its death cycle is transboundary and also transgenerational. As with climate change, plastic pollution not only threatens our human rights to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, but also to the human rights of the generation that will come after us. We as current-day youth neither want to live on a planet suffering from plastic pollution nor want to perpetuate living in a toxic environment.

We, young people, constituting 1.8 billion of the world population will face the impacts of plastic pollution the most, and those living in the Global South are already suffering the consequences of climate change, plastic pollution, and biodiversity loss today. We are the least responsible for these crises, and yet, it is our generation that  faces the prospect of a seriously compromised future characterized by alarming health consequences, disasters, and unlivable conditions -- all  because of the world’s unsustainable addiction to plastic spawned by corporate greed and government inaction.

We, the largest generation of youth, are left with this debacle to fix after decades of neglect and abuse by the generations that have come before us. The plastic pollution crisis is one of the biggest challenges that our generation and succeeding ones face and therefore we demand the following to be included in the Global Plastics Treaty: 

1. Significant, progressive, and mandatory targets to cap and dramatically reduce virgin, fossil-fuel plastic production;
2. Legally binding, time-bound, and ambitious targets to implement and scale up reuse, refill, and alternative product delivery systems -- these are the solutions we want to see, no more techno-fixes and false solutions, such as incineration or the so-called chemical recycling, that only perpetuate our addiction to plastic;
3. A just transition to safer and more sustainable livelihoods for workers and communities across the plastics supply chain, and strong provisions that hold polluting corporations and plastic producing countries accountable for the profound damage caused by their excessive production of plastic, whose impacts we will continue to live with for a long time.

Our planet cannot sustain more plastic, our planet cannot sustain more pollution. We cannot continue operating on systems that bank on imagined infinite resources within an indisputably finite planet. We need global leaders to stand up for this fight. We need urgent action, dramatic interventions, and systemic transformation to avert the escalating threats to human health and the accelerating breakdown of the planet’s support systems.