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The inclusion of 'Non-party provisions' in a Plastics Treaty could have an important influence on plastic production within nations that do not become a party to the Treaty. This note summarises a range of precedents in multilateral treaties for Non-party provisions along with advantages and disadvantages of Non-party provisions

Multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) aim to address environmental issues of global concern by creating uniform and streamlined approaches and rules to apply to all parties. Treaties serve as agreements between two (or more) States that enter into an agreement, thus creating specific obligations and rights for those parties.

At the core there is no conflict between the WTO system and possible provisions of the future Plastic Treaty, as outlined in UNEPs option paper. However WTO rules are an important safeguard against domestic arbitrary or unjustifiable discriminatory measures.

The Global plastics treaty (GPT) mandates the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) to create binding rules based on the best available science, traditional knowledge, knowledge of indigenous peoples and local knowledge systems

The complexity of global environmental challenges has meant the interface between science and policy has become increasingly important in shipping coordinated global policy response to the world's most complex environmental issues.

Many INC-2 delegated indicated that the scope of the treaty should include plastics alternative and substitutes. However there are no internationally agreed definitions of plastics alternatives nor plastics substitutes. Sound definitions will support fully informed treaty negotiations.

This factsheet is intended to support fully informed global plastics treaty negotiations by clarifying the terminology used to describe plastics as polymers or materials and not plastics as products.

Plastic removal technologies (PRTs) promise to improve environmental quality by removing plastics from the environment but they can also threaten biodiversity. Almost no environmental impact assessments (EIAs) are done on PRTs.

The ever-increasing discharges and accumulation of microplastics in the environment is a serious global concern. Microplastics are found in polar ice caps, at the top of mountains, in soil, freshwater systems and all ocean basins, from the surface to the deep sea.

To deliver an international legally binding instrument (ILBI) to end plastic pollution will require mobilising substantial financial resources from a variety of sources to achieve its objective. This may include leveraging new multilateral finance from developed (donor) countries developing (recipient) countries party to the new agreement, accessing existing multilateral and bilateral finance and ensuring flows of private sector finance.