Media Contact Megan Manning manningm@ash.org (202) 659 – 4310 Santa Cruz County’s First-in-the-World Cigarette Filter Ban Passed SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA – OCTOBER 29, 2024 – Today, the Board of Supervisors of Santa Cruz County, California finalized its approval of a ban on the sale of filtered cigarettes and cigars. The sales
April 30, 2024 – The fourth meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) for a treaty to end plastic pollution was relatively grueling. Eight days (Weekend? What weekend?) with informal meetings for the three days leading up to the official start. ASH and its allies in the Stop Tobacco Pollution
April 28, 2024 – INC4 returned to full plenary for the first time in several days in order to discuss the possibility of intercessional work. Given the state of the draft text, it seems impossible to finish at INC5 in the absence of work over the next few months. –
April 27, 2024 – It is the fifth day of negotiations and fatigue is becoming evident as sessions go to 11:00pm and later, and the weekend brings no respite. Working groups are deep in text negotiations. And both contact groups that are negotiating our major interests will begin to move
April 26, 2024 – The third and fourth days of negotiations were spent discussing the minutiae of critical sections of the treaty. The highlight of the day came when Peru called for cigarette filters to be banned. Panama quickly supported them. Other notable news: – Switzerland, supported by four other
April 24, 2024 – Today the INC broke into groups to begin the arduous task of editing the zero draft. Even on the second day, the need for quick progress was recognized, and negotiations continued throughout the evening hours. This is when the work becomes a marathon; large delegations have
April 23, 2024 – Today was the opening of INC-4 and began with the opening plenary. The Chair – Luis Vayas Valdivieso of Ecuador – asked that delegations not make typical opening statements in order to save time. All the countries that produce oil or plastic precursor chemicals did so
April 22, 2024 – The fourth round of negotiations for the UN Treaty to End Plastic Pollution formally begins tomorrow, April 23rd, here in Ottawa. There has already been enough preliminary activity and speeches to warrant an early update. But it’s not great. As you may recall, ASH and our
November 20, 2023 – INC-3 adjourned on Sunday, November 19th with a decision for the Secretariat to provide a revised zero draft text. The text will be available by December 31, 2023 and will serve as the subsequent document to be negotiated at INC-4, which will be held from April 21-30,
November 17, 2023 – The contact groups continued with the publication of the written submissions and revised synthesis documents. The Stop Tobacco Pollution Alliance (STPA) and its allies spent much of the day reviewing everything as we were able. (Available online for those following along). Today’s debates centered around how and
November 16, 2023 – Contact Groups continued today in the run up to the plenary, which was quite brief. The plenary only included a review of each Contact Groups’ progress and the next steps on the agenda for each group. Contact Groups 2 and 3 have completed their first round
November 15, 2023 – Day 3 brought back-to-back to back Contact Group sessions. The atmosphere is intense with member states eager to maximize their time available in Nairobi for INC-3 negotiations. Today, we also learned that the day would be extended to accommodate another evening Contact Group 1 session. Robust
November 14, 2023 – Per usual INC was off to a slow start, running behind on the agenda which was revised overnight to allow for added plenary time this morning to accommodate additional member state interventions and observer interventions. Despite the delays, we were very pleased to see Panama, Uruguay,
November 13, 2023 – The third negotiating session of the UN Treaty to End Plastic Pollution, held at United Nations Environmental Programme headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya began today, commencing another 7 days of discussion on ways to combat the devasting impact of plastic pollution on our planet. Though we are
December 5, 2022 – The first of five Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) meetings for the UN Plastics Pollution treaty is finished. The plan is to approve a final text roughly two years from now, which will be handed over to the UN Environmental Assembly for adoption. Then it will be opened
December 1, 2022 – Today, ASH was able to make a second intervention during the plenary discussions on the role of nongovernmental stakeholders in negotiations going forward. Many thanks to our allies in the environmental coalition for their vital input. Here is our intervention, to give you a taste of
November 30, 2022 – Today, several delegations mentioned the need to ensure basic human rights as we hammer out a treaty to end plastics pollution. This got me to thinking. It should be all about human rights. In the discussions leading up to INC-1, as I’ve mentioned previously, “inclusiveness” has
November 29, 2022 – The highlight of today was a three-hour Multi-Stakeholder Forum. If that title sets off your radar, your radar is well-calibrated. The industries that have caused the plastic pollution problem were given the same platform and respect as civil society groups struggling to stop them. Some were
November 28, 2022 – Greetings from Punta del Este. Today is an historic day in the history of environmental protection. At 10:00am local time, the first round of negotiations for the global plastics pollution treaty got under way. Whether it was a good day or a bad is to be
