Are Negotiators Turning the Plastics Treaty into a Death Treaty?

By Deborah Sy
GENEVA, Aug 12 2025 – The future plastics treaty is being sold as potentially an environmental breakthrough. But in its current form during this week’s negotiations, it contains a dangerous flaw that must be addressed before the final text is agreed — or it could undercut the world’s most widely ratified health treaty, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), and hand the tobacco industry the tools to expand its market under the banner of environmental action.

The most littered plastic item on earth — the cigarette filter — is also the world’s most regulated consumer product, covered by its own global treaty, the WHO FCTC. This puts it center stage in both the plastics treaty and the tobacco treaty — a unique overlap that demands alignment between the two.

Yet the current plastics treaty text is peppered with alignment clauses for trade agreements, not health agreements. It also promotes Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), “safe” alternatives, and recycling — none of which are compatible with or permitted for tobacco.

The WHO has recommended immediately banning all types of cigarette filters outright (not just plastic ones), recognizing that no safe alternatives exist for these highly toxic components and that no scalable, safe recycling method is available.

In stark contrast, the current plastics treaty text’s ceiling calls only for a “phase-out” until 203x, leaving much space for continued production and marketing. The Conference of the Parties to the FCTC (COP) has also warned that tobacco EPR is a marketing ploy that entrenches industry interference.

Under FCTC Article 2.2, Parties must ensure that any subsequent treaties they enter into are compatible with the FCTC — a duty the plastics treaty must respect.

If these loopholes stay to create obstacles for tobacco control and open doors for tobacco industry interreference, the cost will be measured in lives. With 1.3 billion current tobacco users worldwide, even a 1% market increase driven by “eco-filter” marketing or tobacco industry greenwashing would mean at least 13 million additional smokers, ultimately leading to an estimated 6.5 million premature deaths based on tobacco’s established 50% lifetime mortality rate.

This is also a generational betrayal. On International Youth Day on Aug 12 2025, with the theme of empowering youth, building a resilient future, negotiators must ensure the treaty does not do the opposite. If the treaty shields trade but not health, it will leave young people more exposed to toxic plastics, predatory marketing, and lifelong addiction — all while granting the industry a green veneer.

The problem is fixable. The chair’s text currently gives trade agreements explicit, binding protection, while health treaties get only soft principles. Some point to certain health exemptions in trade agreements as a possible safeguard but it is problematic: It has saved public health measures before, like plain packaging, but only after years of costly disputes and delays — time the tobacco industry uses to keep selling and misleading.

Without a binding requirement to implement the plastics treaty “in a manner compatible with relevant international health agreements, such as the WHO FCTC,” the tobacco industry will ensure that trade rules would dominate legal interpretation. That would make it harder to defend filter bans from WTO challenges and could legitimize tobacco EPR — despite COP10 warnings these are marketing ploys that entrench industry interference.

The fix is simple: Give health protections the same binding legal status as trade protections. If the treaty can protect trade, it can protect life. Anything less is not a plastics treaty for the planet. It’s a treaty for markets — and in the case of tobacco, it could kill more people than it saves.

SIDE BAR

Toxic Truth: Why Cigarette Filters Are Not “Green”

Cigarette butts are the most littered plastic item on Earth — and among the most toxic. Around 100 hazardous chemicals, metals and compounds have been identified in cigarette butt waste, including:

• • Carcinogens – Arsenic, cadmium, lead, formaldehyde, benzo[a]pyrene.
• • Endocrine disruptors – DEHP and DBP, restricted under EU REACH.
• • Neurotoxins and aquatic poisons – Nicotine, acrolein, PAHs.

• Heavy metals – Cadmium and lead persist in soils and waterways.

These leach into water, poison marine life, and contaminate ecosystems. There is no safe or sustainable “eco-filter” — the same toxins will appear in any filter regardless of material composition — any claim otherwise is greenwashing. Due to the toxicity, these cannot be safely recycled at scale.

Modest estimates show that over 26B USD per year is lost in terms of marine ecosystem losses arising from tobacco’s plastics alone.

Why the “Domestic Measures” Clause Protects Nothing

The chair’s draft says:

“Nothing in this Convention prevents a Party from taking additional domestic measures… in accordance with that Party’s other obligations under applicable international law.”

Why it’s not enough:

1. FCTC limits – The WHO FCTC has no binding obligation to ban cigarette filters or tobacco EPR. These are in guidelines, so the tobacco industry can argue that they aren’t “rights or obligations” protected here.

2. Consistency trap – Measures must be “consistent with this Convention.” If the plastics treaty permits eco-filters or tobacco EPR, national measures would have to allow them too.

3. “Other obligations” + multiple mention of trade treaties ≠ health treaty obligations – In practice, this phrase will be read as trade law and other environment agreements first, since these are spelled out elsewhere in the text.

4. Domestic only – The clause applies only to national measures, potentially excluding global or coordinated bans.

The clause permits tobacco EPR and non-plastic but still toxic filters — which means it blocks neither and could legitimize harmful industry tactics the FCTC warns against.

In Geneva — where the plastics treaty is being negotiated — many delegates are seasoned negotiators with experience in the tobacco treaty and other multilateral deals. They know the tobacco industry is also here, using the talks to push “eco filters” (toxic non-plastic filters) and waste schemes for green marketing cover.

Those based in Geneva have the highest duty to close the health loophole, but every negotiator in the room shares the responsibility. Right now, they are ensuring trade rules get binding protection in the treaty. They should be doing the same for health. Instead, health is left as a weak, non-binding principle — a loophole the industry can exploit. If it stays, the treaty could enable over a million additional tobacco deaths each year while claiming to solve the plastic crisis.

Deborah Sy is a lawyer and global health advocate, serving as Head of Strategy and Global Public Policy at the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC), the convener of the Stop Tobacco Pollution Alliance (STPA). She is also the Senior Advisor and Founder of Health Justice Philippines, an observer to the UN Environment Program and the UN Plastics Treaty negotiations.

IPS UN Bureau

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