A Primer on Compliance and Enforcement Issues for Plastics Pollution
Date: 31 January 2024
Location: Virtual Webinar
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The scope and seriousness of plastics pollution has become increasingly prominent evidenced by the fact that the United Nations has made plastics pollution a priority for its 73rd General Assembly and the negotiations of a new Plastics Treaty. As much as 12 million tons of plastics reach oceans each year, about 100,000 marine mammals are killed as a result of plastics each year, and as much as 83 percent of tap water has been found to include plastics particles. Dealing with the diffuse and society-wide issue of plastic pollution requires new legal regimes but, equally important, it will require careful consideration about how to design these laws so that that are enforceable, developing new compliance and enforcement tools that can address the breadth of the problem, building capacity of government agencies to identify violators and assure compliance, and building new relationships between the public and private sector to support implementation of new legal regimes. The webinar is designed to outline the landscape for compliance and enforcement issues under existing laws, identify critical issues in designing new laws to enhance enforceability, and identify the need for capacity building to support enforcement of plastics legal regimes.