Plastic Pollution and Transparency in Trade Flows in the Context Multilateral Environmental Agreements and the Protection of the Environment and Health | 2025 BRS COPs Side Event

This side event to the 2025 meetings of the Conference of the Parties to the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions is organized by the co-coordinators of the Dialogue on Plastic Pollution and the Forum on Trade, Environment and the SDGs (TESS).

About this Event

Trade occurs at all stages of the plastics life cycle in significant volumes. Given the role of trade in the functioning of international supply chains and global production, transforming international trade and supply chains towards greater sustainability will be key to tackling plastic pollution. In 2022, the value of global plastics trade was over $1.2 trillion, or almost 4% of global trade. Accurately tracing plastic trade flows is a difficult task because plastics are present in a huge diversity of products traded internationally. Notably, official trade data provide limited information on trade flows in a great variety of products that contain embedded plastics or that have associated packaging. Members states to the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on plastic pollution have considered transparency in trade flows as a key aspect to implement effective control measures for plastic products and chemicals of concern in plastic products.

The collection of trade data is underpinned by the classification of products provided by the World Customs Organization’s (WCO) Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System, generally referred to as the Harmonized System (HS). This international nomenclature is an important starting point to inform public policy with a a more granular picture of trade flows across the whole life cycle of plastics. Also, to ensure better control of transboundary movements and prevent illegal traffic certain Multilateral Environmental Agreements have processes of collaboration with the WCO. For example, the Basel Convention has had a long-standing cooperation with the WCO to identify wastes covered under the Convention in the HS. This cooperation was initiated to ensure better control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and other wastes and enhance the prevention of illegal traffic. The separate identification of wastes in the HS can provide greater understanding of the extent of the illegal traffic problem and increase the scope for identifying and targeting problem areas.

The Dialogue on Plastic Pollution (DPP) at World Trade Organization (WTO) have been dedicated to assessing ways to improve transparency, monitoring and understanding of trade flows throughout the value chain of plastics. As a result, the DPP has requested the WCO to explore options ton improve international cooperation on the classifications of plastics and plastic products, and of potential alternative plastics and non-plastic substitutes, in order to support monitoring and regulation of trade across their life cycles. These are being discussed as part of the WCO HS reform process.

In this side-event, the DPP co-coordinators with the Forum on Trade, Environment and the SGDs (TESS) aims at bringing attention to the importance of furthering transparency efforts to address plastic pollution. This panel discussion will aim at making visible often invisible elements of environmental policy development and provide:

An overview on the importance of transparency and the HS in furthering the objectives and effectiveness of Multilateral Environmental Agreements, such as the Basel and Stockholm Conventions, as well as domestic policies for the protection of the environment and health.
Highlight the transparency needs to effectively implement a future plastics treaty and where the harmonized system could play a supportive role for effective implementation.
Shed light on the work of the DPP on improving transparency, including through collaborating with the HS as well as other suggestions and practices identified in the work of the DPP to improve transparency, monitoring and the understanding of trade flows of plastics.