Plastics are manufactured chemical materials produced from fossil carbon–gas, oil, and coal. Plastics have supported extraordinary advances in virtually every area of human endeavor, and they have made our daily lives very convenient. However, is now clear that plastics are neither as safe nor as inexpensive as they seem. Plastics’ benefits come at great and increasingly visible costs to human health, the environment, and social justice.

The Minderoo Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health, anchored at Boston College, found that plastics harm human health at every stage of their life cycle – from extraction of the crude oil, fracked gas, and coal that are plastics’ principal feedstocks, through transport, manufacture, use, recycling, and on to disposal into the environment. Plastic production further endangers health by releasing nearly 2 gigatons of CO2 to the atmosphere each year, as much as the annual contribution of Brazil, thus driving climate change and magnifying its consequences.

Plastics’ harms fall disproportionately on the poor, minorities, and the marginalized. Groups at particularly high risk are fossil fuel extraction workers; chemical and plastic production workers; informal waste and recovery workers; persons living near pipelines, rail lines and compressor stations, such as the community of East Palestine, Ohio; people living in “fenceline” communities adjacent to plastic production facilities; Indigenous communities, and people in the Global South. Children are at very high risk. These groups did not create the current plastics crisis. They do not profit from it. They lack the power to address it. Yet they suffer its most severe consequences. They are victims of social and environmental injustice on a planetary scale.

Continuing exponential increases in plastic production are the main driver of plastics’ worsening harms. Annual output has grown from under 2 million tons in 1950 to more than 400 million tons today. Output is projected to double by 2040 and treble by 2060 as fossil fuel producers pivot to plastic in anticipation of decreasing demand for fossil energy. Disposable, single-use items account for about 40% of current production and contribute disproportionately to the accumulation of plastic waste. Plastic waste is ubiquitous in the environment, where it breaks down into chemical-laden micro- and nanoplastic particles (MNPs), which damage ecosystems and are responsible for widespread human exposure.

In response to the worsening plastics crisis, the U.N. Environment Assembly voted in March 2022 to develop a Global Plastics Treaty. The goal is to reduce plastic pollution across the entire plastic lifecycle. An Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee has met four times, and their fifth and final meeting is scheduled to take place in Korea in late November. The U.N.’s intent is to finish drafting the treaty by the end of 2024.

The Minderoo Monaco Commission argued that inclusion in the Global Plastics Treaty of a mandatory, legally binding global cap on the production of new plastic will be essential for protecting human health and advancing social justice. The Treaty needs also to include restrictions on single-use plastics, and comprehensive regulation of plastic chemicals.

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What Will This Conference Add?

This Conference is based on the recognition that the plastics crisis is more than an environmental challenge. Like climate change, air pollution, biodiversity loss, and escalating inequality, the plastics crisis is also a social and ethical challenge. It is another example of humanity’s reckless strip‐mining of the earth’s resources and mortgaging of humanity’s future for short‐term economic gain.

Building on this recognition, the purpose of this Conference is to bring moral clarity to the conversation on plastic pollution. We will do this by:

• Examining recent, rapid increases in plastic production and plastic pollution through the lens of ethics;
• Proposing just, scientifically sound remedies to the plastic crisis;
• Producing a Declaration at the conclusion of the conference that urges the negotiators for the UN Global Plastics Treaty, and especially the delegates from high-income countries, to work together to produce a legally binding, just, and equitable Treaty that prioritizes the protection of human rights and the protection of health for all people; and
• Producing a book based on the discussions at the conference that examines the ethical foundations of the plastics crisis and serves as a reference for those who wish to develop solutions that are scientifically sound, just, and ethical.

The Conference will be held in-person on the Chestnut Hill campus of Boston College and it is open to the public. Registration is required for all attendees. Undergraduate and graduate students are invited to submit posters that will be on display throughout the conference. Please see the Call for Posters.