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<keyword id="55910" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Air-Pollution" source="Orion">Air pollution</keyword> is a pressing global issue that affects both developed and developing nations. Using data from the IQAir 2022 World Air Quality Ranking we will examine the <keyword id="19039904" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="most-polluted-countries-in-the-world" source="Orion">most polluted countries in the world</keyword> from 2018 to 2022, shedding light on the sources of <keyword id="13001" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Pollution" source="Orion">pollution</keyword> and the impacts on public health and the environment. 1. Chad Chad tops the list as one of the <keyword id="13437378" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="most-polluted-countries" source="Orion">most polluted countries</keyword>, with alarming levels of particulate matter (PM2.5). The sources of pollution primarily stem from various factors, including industrial activities and vehicular emissions. 2. Iraq Iraq is the second most polluted country on our list. The rise in air pollution can be attributed to increased industrial activities and a growing number of vehicles on the road. 3. Pakistan Pakistan has consistently faced severe air pollution, and the data indicates fluctuations in pollution levels. Major sources of pollution include vehicular emissions, industrial discharges, and crop burning. 4. Bahrain Bahrain, despite its small size, faces significant air pollution challenges primarily due to industrial activities and oil refineries. The government has initiated measures to combat this issue. 5. Bangladesh Bangladesh has been grappling with air pollution, mainly driven by vehicular emissions, industrial pollution, and construction activities. The health impacts are severe, leading to respiratory diseases and other health issues. 6. Burkina Faso Burkina Faso, with limited available data, experiences air pollution challenges. The lack of comprehensive data makes it difficult to identify specific sources of pollution. 7. Kuwait Kuwait's air quality is affected by factors such as industrial activities, oil refineries, and construction dust. The hot and arid climate exacerbates pollution issues, leading to health problems. 8. India India, with its rapid urbanization and industrialization, has faced significant air pollution challenges. Major cities like New Delhi often experience hazardous air quality due to vehicular emissions, industrial discharges, and construction activities. 9. Egypt Egypt's air quality is affected by emissions from vehicles and industrial activities. The political situation in the country has hindered environmental regulations and enforcement. 10. Tajikistan Tajikistan has faced fluctuations in air pollution levels, driven by factors such as vehicular emissions and industrial activities. The lack of consistent data makes it challenging to track long-term trends. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Impact on Health and the Environment" comment="subhead" text="Impact on Health and the Environment">Impact on Health and the Environment</cmsannotation> The consequences of air pollution in these countries are severe, with a high incidence of respiratory diseases, cardiovascular problems, and other health issues. Long-term exposure to <keyword id="6489235" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Polluted-Air" source="Orion">polluted air</keyword> can lead to more severe conditions such as lung cancer. In addition to its effect on human health, air pollution also damages the environment, including contributing to climate change, impairing ecosystems, and harming agricultural productivity. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Efforts to Combat Pollution" comment="subhead" text="Efforts to Combat Pollution">Efforts to Combat Pollution</cmsannotation> Many of these countries have recognized the urgent need to address air pollution and have taken measures to mitigate its effects. These efforts include improving public transportation, implementing stricter emission standards, and promoting clean energy alternatives. However, challenges such as limited resources, rapid urbanization, and political instability continue to hamper progress. International cooperation and support are crucial in addressing the problem of air pollution. Multilateral agreements and partnerships can help countries access technology, financing, and expertise to combat pollution effectively. Air pollution is a global concern, and the data from 2018 to 2022 highlights the persistent challenges faced by the most <keyword id="19165516" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="polluted-countries" source="Orion">polluted countries</keyword>. These nations must continue their efforts to improve air quality, protect public health, and safeguard the environment. The path to cleaner air involves a combination of government initiatives, international collaboration, and individual actions to reduce emissions and protect the planet for future generations.

The most polluted countries in the world: A global environmental concern

<keyword id="22976106" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="indoor" source="keywords">Indoor</keyword> <keyword id="19900550" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="air-pollution" source="keywords">air pollution</keyword> is a bigger <keyword id="21117961" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="health-risk" source="keywords">health risk</keyword> than <keyword id="20543591" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="outdoor" source="keywords">outdoor</keyword> air pollution in India, and sometimes cities are cleaner than nearby villages where <keyword id="22976772" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="household-pollution" source="keywords">household pollution</keyword> is higher, according to the country's two top policy experts. Addressing the India <keyword id="20445293" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="clean-air" source="keywords">Clean Air</keyword> Summit (ICAS) 2024, Principal Advisor, <keyword id="19904190" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Ministry-of-Health-and-Family-Welfare" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Ministry of Health and Family Welfare" meta.hostid="83" meta.entityid="Ministry of Health and Family Welfare">Ministry of Health and Family Welfare</keyword>, Soumya Swaminathan said, "Studies done in Delhi have shown that women's average exposure to high levels of <keyword id="20827287" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="black-carbon" source="keywords">black carbon</keyword> (women <keyword id="19895006" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="WHO" source="keywords">who</keyword> are mostly at home) is as much as auto-rickshaw passengers going around outdoor exposed to the ambient air pollution in Delhi, resulting in high systolic blood pressure." "Cities contribute less than 20 per cent to the overall state emissions, wherever they have been assessed, but household emissions predominate, ranging between 20 per cent and 40 per cent. Across the country, we are seeing is that sometimes cities are cleaner than the surrounding villages where household air pollution predominates," she said at the summit organised by think-tank Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy. This builds a strong case for expanding the scope of India's National Clean Air Programme (<keyword id="20133150" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="NCAP" source="keywords">NCAP</keyword>), which currently focuses on non-attainment cities. Air pollution is a major threat to public health and contributes to a significant amount of morbidity as well as mortality. Apart from PM2.5 and PM10, short-lived climate pollutants such as black carbon, methane, ozone, and hydrocarbons have the potential to harm the environment and warm the atmosphere even more than CO2. Black carbon can cause chronic respiratory illnesses, lung cancer, emphysema, pneumonia, asthma, heart disease, and low birthweight. "In terms of reducing our life expectancy, globally, PM2.5 is contributing to about 2.3 years of life lost. Just below that is tobacco. In fact, there's so much attention on tobacco and global frameworks for control, but not the same level of attention has been paid to PM2.5 and certainly not the same level of commitments," Swaminathan said. The impact of air pollution is not limited to public health but has a significant economic cost as well. Recently, the World Bank published a study highlighting that air pollution has resulted in a loss of around USD 8.1 trillion in 2019, which is 6.1 per cent of the global gross domestic product (GDP). "We are always talking about air pollution as a problem but studies also show a strong economic case for action on clean air. There are significant positive consequences to investing in cleaning up the air in terms of the return on investments. We know air pollution is not just bad for our health, but it's also bad for agriculture, because it reduces the sunlight that's reaching the crops and it's bad for our economy or any country's economy as it deters people from coming and living or visiting those places," Swaminathan added. Kalpana Balakrishnan, Director, WHO Collaborating Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, said that the main barrier to shifting to clean cooking fuels that can help reduce household air pollution levels is finance. "If we give free LPG to women for two years, they are unlikely to shift back to biomass cooking even if you remove the subsidies," she said. Through Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) launched in May 2016, more than 100 million households in India received LPG cylinders by the end of March 2023. Studies shows over 50 per cent of the households that received new LPG cylinders under PMUY did not choose to refill it even once. Around a third of the world's population - 2.4 billion people globally (including 500 million people in India) - still lack access to clean cooking solutions. Although the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MOPNG) claims that the country's household LPG "coverage" stands at 99.8 per cent, the National Family Health Survey conducted in 2019-21 (NFHS-5) shows that 41 per cent of the population still cooks on biomass.

Indoor air pollution poses greater health risk than outdoor: Experts

Incidence of stroke and related deaths are rising substantially around the world, with <keyword id="19900550" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="air-pollution" source="keywords">air pollution</keyword>, <keyword id="21334318" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="high-temperatures" source="keywords">high temperatures</keyword> and metabolic risk factors such as high blood pressure and physical inactivity, driving these increases, according to estimates published in The Lancet Neurology journal. Researchers found that the contribution of high temperatures to poor health and early death due to stroke has increased 72% since 1990 and is likely to continue increasing in the future, thereby highlighting how environmental factors can impact growing stroke burden. Further, for the first time, particulate matter or PM air pollution was found to have the same contribution as smoking towards causing a fatal form of brain bleed, according to the researchers forming the <keyword id="20691740" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Global-Burden-of-Disease" source="keywords">Global Burden of Disease</keyword>, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) group. The GBD study, the "largest and most comprehensive effort to quantify health loss across places and over time", is coordinated by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington, US. Globally, the number of people experiencing a stroke for the first time rose to 119 lakh in 2021 -- up by 70% since 1990 -- while deaths related to stroke rose to 73 lakh, which was up by 44% since 1990, making the neurological condition the third leading cause of death after ischaemic heart disease (short supply of blood to heart) and COVID-19. They added that over three-fourth of those affected by strokes live in low- and middle-income countries. According to lead author Valery L. Feigin from Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand, the rapid growth in the number of people affected by stroke strongly suggested that <keyword id="23228151" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="stroke-prevention" source="keywords">stroke prevention</keyword> strategies currently used are not sufficiently effective. "New, proven effective population-wide and motivational individual prevention strategies that could be applied to all people at risk of having a stroke, regardless of the level of risk, as recommended in the recent Lancet Neurology Commission on Stroke should be implemented across the globe urgently," said Feigin. The researchers also estimated that stroke-related liabilities attributable to 23 modifiable risk factors, including air pollution, excess body weight, high blood pressure, smoking and physical inactivity, increased from 100 million years of healthy life lost in 1990 to 135 million in 2021. These risk factors are present in huge numbers in Eastern Europe, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, they said. The authors also acknowledged substantial progress made in reducing the global stroke burden from risk factors linked to poor diet, air pollution and smoking. Poor health resulting from diets high in processed meat and low in vegetables declined by 40 % and 30%, respectively, while that due to PM air pollution and smoking fell by 20 % and 13%, respectively, they found. The results suggested that strategies for reducing exposure to these risk factors over the past three decades such as clean air zones and public smoking bans have been successful, the authors said. They called for implementing and monitoring the evidence-based recommendations set out in the 2023 World Stroke Organization-Lancet Neurology Commission on stroke for drastically reducing the global burden of stroke in the years to come and improving brain health and overall well-being of millions of people around the world. The recommendations include stroke surveillance programmes that monitor indicators of stroke such as incidence, recurrence, death rates and risk factors in a country, and care and rehabilitation services for people affected by stroke.

Stroke cases increasing globally, air pollution, high temperatures driving numbers, notes Lancet Study

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The US is facing a nationwide housing shortage.</li><li>VP Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have both proposed building homes on federal land.</li></ul>America is facing a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/buying-home-not-easier-interest-rate-cuts-prices-rent-crisis-2024-8">severe housing shortage</a>. That's one thing the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates agree on.They also agree that the federal government should be a landlord — by opening up more of its property for housing.However, their proposals differ. While former President Donald Trump has proposed <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-freedom-cities-build-housing-conservatives-scoff-at-leftist-plan-2023-3">building entirely new cities</a> on federal land, Vice President Kamala Harris would likely continue the Biden <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/policy-and-practice-publication-2024-july.pdf">administration's efforts</a> to open up certain parcels for dense affordable housing.Building homes on government-owned land isn't new. State and local governments often lease or sell land to builders, including affordable housing developers, particularly in areas with high demand for homes. And out West, the federal government is the major landowner. The feds <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.hcn.org/articles/could-building-on-public-land-address-the-housing-crisis/">own about half of the land</a> in 13 Western states. Many of these states, from <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/housing/welcome-to-las-vegas-housing-crisis-in-2024-3075247/">Nevada</a> to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/2024/03/08/5-numbers-that-show-just-how-bad/">Utah</a>, are experiencing severe housing affordability crises.In a rare overlap of goals between the two campaigns, Harris and Trump have both proposed building housing on federal land."It speaks to the underlying agreement over there being a housing supply issue," Matthew Murphy, executive director of NYU's Furman Center, told Business Insider. "And then the following logical question being, what can the government do about it? What are the ways it can intervene?"<h2 id="761aedd1-7cbe-4215-960a-54c25c346d79">Low-hanging fruit in the nation's hottest housing markets</h2>The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy's Center for Geospatial Solutions <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://cgsearth.org/cgs-who-owns-america-government-land-report">found in a new study</a> that there are about 276,000 acres of underused government-owned land in urban, transit-accessible areas that could be used to build 1.9 million additional homes.The vast majority of buildable public land in dense, urban areas is owned by city and county governments. While the federal government doesn't have much prime, vacant land in cities to devote to housing, it has a role to play in providing financial and regulatory support to incentivize state and local governments to make their land available, McCarthy said.The report found that Massachusetts and Florida have the most buildable square acreage of any state in the country."What surprised us the most is that actually that land is in some of the hottest housing markets in the country," McCarthy said.<div type="image" title="A map of buildable public land in Massachusetts." height="628" width="1200" msid="112948644" hostid="261" sizebytes="25600"></div>Local governments tend to be cautious in selling, leasing, or otherwise repurposing the land they own, in part because of anti-development pushback from local communities. But in some states, city, county, and state governments regularly team up with developers to build housing.In one case, San Mateo County, just south of San Francisco, leased a parcel of land in Half Moon Bay to an affordable housing developer, MidPen Housing, for $1 a year for 99 years. MidPen used it to build 160 units of new affordable senior housing, now known as <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.huduser.gov/portal/casestudies/study-122419.html">Half Moon Village</a>.Because the area has extremely high land values and demand for housing, the fact that the county government owns the land made the project financially feasible. Privately owned land in the city would likely be too expensive for affordable housing to pencil out. And because the county owns the land it has some control over what's on it. In this case, that means ensuring the housing remains affordable."It's effectively a land donation, which helps make the project more feasible, allows us to move more quickly, build the housing more quickly," said Abby Goldware Potluri, a senior vice president and co-head of housing development at MidPen.<div type="image" title="A map of underused government-owned land in urban areas." height="912" width="1817" msid="112948638" hostid="261" sizebytes="52930"></div><h2 id="90e58408-27c6-4990-95d7-f7ca2e83d8e5">'Freedom cities' versus affordable housing near transit</h2>Trump and Harris couldn't be farther apart on most issues, including the bulk of their housing agendas.Harris wants to funnel a lot more federal money into subsidizing first-time homebuyers and affordable home construction, while Trump wants to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/01/business/economy/trump-interest-rates-fed.html">lower interest rates</a>, which presidents don't historically have control over, and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/29/us/politics/trump-suburbs-housing-white-voters.html">protect restrictive zoning</a>.While Harris has put forth a plan to construct <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-kamala-harris-plans-to-build-3-million-new-homes-2024-8">3 million additional homes</a> by slashing red tape, Trump has said he'll <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jd-vance-deport-20-million-immigrants-reduce-home-prices-rents-2024-7">deport millions of immigrants</a> to free up housing.Last year, Trump floated a proposal to build 10 so-called "freedom cities" on federal land in the style of a futuristic <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-neom-first-eco-city-experts-design-architecture-2024-7">Saudi desert city-building project</a> with plentiful single-family housing. Economists and housing experts — and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-freedom-cities-build-housing-conservatives-scoff-at-leftist-plan-2023-3">even some conservatives</a> — have generally dismissed the plan as unworkable or undesirable for political, economic, and environmental reasons.Some Republican lawmakers agree that more federal land should be used for homes. Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has introduced <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.lee.senate.gov/services/files/1581B75E-3A53-44A2-9F1D-E516702DBB9D">a bill</a> to allow state and local governments to buy land from the federal Bureau of Land Management to use for new housing.Housing experts generally advocate for denser housing construction, particularly in areas near mass transit. When it comes to federal land, this would mean repurposing property in transit-rich urban areas that happens to be owned by the feds. Think new apartments above post offices, homes where parking lots used to be, and new condos in former federal office buildings.In that vein, the Biden-Harris administration has pushed to free up government-owned property for housing. The current administration has <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/07/16/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-major-new-actions-to-lower-housing-costs-by-limiting-rent-increases-and-building-more-homes/">urged state and local governments and other entities</a> — including healthcare institutions and faith-based organizations — to look into whether they could also become landlords. As part of that effort, the US Postal Service is supposed to "pilot the repurposing of certain surplus properties for housing.""Depending on which side of the aisle you're on, the nature of the housing you're going to build is going to be quite different," George McCarthy, who heads the Lincoln Institute, told Business Insider. "But finding the land is, of course, issue number one."Trump has attacked Democrats for pushing for more affordable, multi-family housing. He's framed the Republican Party as <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-protecting-suburbs-preserving-american-dream-americans/">protectors of single-family zoning</a>.Democrats' plan also addresses challenges governments face when trying to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/14/business/sale-surplus-federal-buildings.html">sell or transform</a> underused old buildings or unique structures. It's sitting on <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.route-fifty.com/management/2023/07/federal-government-has-more-8000-vacant-properties-why-arent-they-being-used-house-homeless/388312/">nearly 8,000 unused properties</a>, according to congressional lawmakers. The General Services Administration — the federal government's landlord — has <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://federalnewsnetwork.com/facilities-construction/2023/11/gsa-accelerates-plans-to-offload-federal-buildings-it-no-longer-needs/">listed for sale many buildings</a> it no longer uses nationwide, from a courthouse in Fort Lauderdale to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/11/29/dc-downtown-webster-school/">a historic school building</a> in downtown DC.Buyers are hard to find. Sometimes, the costs of repairing the property, particularly those protected by historic preservation laws, are too high. In other cases, it's more expensive for the government to move workers out of a building and prep it for sale than to keep operating a half-empty property. But with the right government incentives, developers could turn property that sucks value out of a community into a boon for residents.<h2 id="aac76a0d-817b-4bd1-96a5-0ccbd458c8d5">Boosting housing in a swing state</h2>One state with lots of immediate potential also happens to be a key swing state with a particularly severe housing shortage. Nevada is a national outlier when it comes to its government-owned land: <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-nevada/how-much-of-nevadas-land-is-owned-by-the-feds-more-than-you-might-think-3050451/">more than 80% of the state's land</a> is owned and controlled by the federal government.The Biden administration has proposed <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.blm.gov/programs/lands-and-realty/regional-information/nevada/snplma/affordable-housing-reservations">selling hundreds of acres</a> of land in Nevada controlled by the Bureau of Land Management to local governments to build thousands of new homes. In <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.blm.gov/press-release/blm-seeks-input-proposed-sale-public-lands-affordable-housing">one proposal</a>, it wants to sell 20 acres of BLM land just outside Las Vegas — priced at $100 an acre — to the county government to use for about 150 units of housing for those who make up to 80% of the area median income."Building towards affordable housing on these lands could have a transformative impact, especially because land costs are a major barrier," Maurice Page, executive director of the nonpartisan Nevada Housing Coalition, told Business Insider.But repurposing federal land for new residential communities in Nevada would likely mean more sprawl, which comes with both environmental and economic concerns. The farther people live from their workplaces and other amenities, the more they need to drive, which is expensive and polluting. When building new housing means sprawl, developers have to factor in infrastructure and other costs — and that could start to look more like Trump's desert cities than a climate-friendly urbanist vision."If we build housing, we have to make sure that it can be affordable with the right transportation and other infrastructure pieces being aligned with it, so education, law enforcement, hospitals," Page said.

Thousands of homes on $1 land: The new housing crisis solution sweeping the country

<ul class="summary-list"><li>World leaders are in Ottawa negotiating a treaty to end plastic pollution.</li><li>The US, a major plastic exporter, says its a dealmaker but is under pressure to be more ambitious.</li></ul>World leaders are gathering in Ottawa, Ontario, this week to hash out a global treaty to end plastic pollution.It's a pivotal point in the talks, with countries aiming to strike a deal by the end of the year. The US has positioned itself as a broker between other big oil, gas, and petrochemical exporters — including Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia — and countries that want steep cuts to plastic production.But critics say the US isn't being ambitious enough."We'd like to see clear recognition from the US that the treaty has to confront the production of plastic polymers and resins if it's to be successful," Carroll Muffett, the president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law, told Business Insider. "We cannot recycle our way out of the plastics crisis."Muffett is among a handful of scientists and business and community advocacy groups who told BI they wanted to see a stronger position from the US. The country has a lot of sway as the world's largest exporter of oil and gas, the main ingredients in plastics. The US has also been at the forefront of a massive build-out of new plastics and petrochemical plants over the past decade. The Environmental Integrity Project, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit, <a target="_blank" href="https://environmentalintegrity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Feeding-the-Plastics-Industrial-Complex-3.14.24.pdf">identified 50 plastic plants built after 2012</a> and found that at least 20 more would be built or expanded over the next five years.The trend is global. Plastic production is expected to nearly triple by 2060 unless countries reach a deal to rein it in, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.oecd.org/environment/global-plastic-waste-set-to-almost-triple-by-2060.htm">according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development</a>. A treaty could be the most impactful climate action since the Paris agreement because the plastic industry accounts for 5% of global carbon emissions. That could grow to 20% by 2050 if current trends continue, <a target="_blank" href="https://energyanalysis.lbl.gov/publications/climate-impact-primary-plastic">the US Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory</a> said.A State Department spokesperson in an email said the US is concerned that "overly prescriptive approaches" to ending plastic pollution put the treaty at risk because the largest producers and consumers of plastics might not support it. The US position is focused on policies that drive down the demand for new plastic, such as through government incentives and reuse models. However, the spokesperson said that countries "would not be precluded" from adopting their own policies.The Biden administration wants to finish a deal this year, given that the presidential election is in November, several observers of the negotiations told BI. But it will be difficult to persuade the Senate to ratify a treaty, they said.In Ottawa, major disagreements remain over how to tackle the more than 350 million metric tons of plastic waste produced globally each year, much of which ends up in landfills and the environment. Only 9% of plastics are recycled.Hundreds of businesses and countries support cutting plastic production. This could involve phasing out "problematic" plastics that can't be recycled or are harmful to public health and mandating that products be made with more recycled material. Taxing plastic polymers is also being discussed, which could help finance improvements to waste infrastructure in developing countries."Shared financial responsibility is something we really want to see," Allison Lin, the global vice president of packaging sustainability at Mars Inc., said. Lin represents the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty, which includes more than 200 companies. Among them are Walmart, PepsiCo, and L'Oréal.Lin said the coalition supported a policy called <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/recycling-rate-us-extended-producer-responsibility-cans-bottles-plastic-paper-2023-2">extended producer responsibility</a>, which slaps a fee on companies' packaging to help fund recycling and collection and has been successful in countries such as Belgium. Plastic makers similarly should bear some of the financial burden, she said.Stewart Harris, a spokesperson for the International Council of Chemical Association, agreed that plastic makers needed to make greater investments, and the group supports EPR and recycled-content mandates. But the industry is opposed to taxes because they would be difficult to implement and it would be hard to ensure money flows into programs tackling plastic pollution, he said.Plastic makers also oppose setting caps on production, as do countries including Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Harris cited <a target="_blank" href="https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/mapping-the-plastics-value-chain/">an industry-commissioned report</a> by Oxford Economics that found a cap could increase costs for consumers as well as greenhouse-gas emissions. Plastics require less energy to manufacture and transport compared with some other materials, the report found.Cutting plastic production would also hit the bottom line of oil majors such as Exxon. The <a target="_blank" href="https://www.iea.org/news/petrochemicals-set-to-be-the-largest-driver-of-world-oil-demand-latest-iea-analysis-finds">International Energy Agency forecast</a> that by 2050, petrochemical products like plastic would outpace trucks, aviation, and shipping in oil demand.Neil Nathan, a project scientist at UC Santa Barbara, and his team built an artificial-intelligence model of how 11 policies could curb plastic pollution. While many can make a big dent in the problem in the near term, pollution will eventually go up again without production caps, he said.The model has been shared with US negotiators, Nathan added. He's disappointed the US hasn't included some of the most impactful policies into its position, he said."If the US takes a position or is supportive of something, we typically see a snowball effect," he said.Editor's note: April 25, 2024 — This story has been updated to include a statement from the State Department and clarified to reflect that Neil Nathan said UC Santa Barbara's recommended policies can initially curb pollution, but without production caps, pollution will go up in the long term.

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The most polluted countries in the world: A global environmental concern

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Indoor air pollution poses greater health risk than outdoor: Experts

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Stroke cases increasing globally, air pollution, high temperatures driving numbers, notes Lancet Study

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Thousands of homes on $1 land: The new housing crisis solution sweeping the country

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