Insights into the UN Global Plastics Treaty negotiations

In this episode of the Hydrocarbon Engineering Podcast, we’re joined by Rob Benedict, Vice President, Petrochemicals and Midstream, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), to discuss the outcomes of the final round of UN negotiations for a Global Plastics Treaty.

 

Rob provides background on the negotiations and updates us on how they are progressing following the sixth round of talks in August 2025.

 

Rob provides insight into the negotiation process and explains how AFPM envisions a successful global agreement on plastic waste. He also offers his thoughts on what comes next for the negotiations, and whether the US will remain engaged in the process.

This episode of the Hydrocarbon Engineering Podcast is sponsored by Owens Corning FOAMGLAS® cellular glass insulation — an impermeable insulation trusted in high-performing hydrocarbon processing facilities around the globe. Learn more at https://www.owenscorning.com/en-us/insulation/foamglas

Creators and Guests

Host

Callum O'Reilly

Callum leads the editorial teams at Hydrocarbon Engineering, commissioning articles and features, and representing the magazine at industry events.

Guest

Rob Benedict

Vice President, Petrochemicals and Midstream, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM)

What is Hydrocarbon Engineering Podcast?

The Hydrocarbon Engineering podcast: a podcast series for professionals in the downstream refining, petrochemical and gas processing industries.

Callum O'Reilly: 00:01

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Hydrocarbon Engineering Podcast. I m your host Callum O'Reilly and today I m delighted to welcome to the podcast a special guest Rob Benedict, Vice President for Petrochemicals and Midstream at American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers. Rob is joining us for a timely discussion around the outcomes of the final round of UN negotiations for a global plastics treaty, which took place in August 2025. Rob will provide us with a bit of background on the treaty, talk us through what happened happened in the recent negotiations and consider what comes next. So let's find out more and talk to Rob.

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Callum O'Reilly: 01:58

Hi, Rob. Welcome to the podcast, and thanks so much for joining us today. How are things with you?

Rob Benedict: 02:03

Good. Great to be here, and great to be with you, Callum.

Callum O'Reilly: 02:05

Great. Okay, Rob. So you recently returned from the UN negotiations for a global plastics treaty, and I'm really keen to get your insights into what exactly happened. But before we dive in, perhaps it would

Rob Benedict: 02:20

be useful to tell our listeners a little bit about AFPM and your current role. Sure. The American Petroleum Petrochemical Manufacturers or AFPM, we're a trade association that's over a 125 years old. We represent US refiners as well as petrochemical manufacturers and my role at AFPM is the vice president of petrochemicals and midstream. And on the petrochemical side of what I do that is any policies related to petrochemicals and by extension that would include plastic policies such as the UN global agreement.

Rob Benedict: 02:52

So that's a little bit about what I do.

Callum O'Reilly: 02:53

Great, thank you very much, Rob. So let's get straight into this and talk a little bit about the global plastics treaty. So perhaps it might be useful if you can provide us with a bit of background on these UN negotiations. How did the process get started, and how is it progressing?

Rob Benedict: 03:10

Sure. So this really started back in 2022 in the first half of the year. The UN had a meeting where they had decided and passed a resolution that they wanted to create what's called a multilateral environmental agreement on plastic pollution specifically. This resolution was called Resolution five fourteen and it laid out what the treaty's goals were, but also it set up what they call an intergovernmental negotiating committee, so a group of member states with career negotiators and diplomats that would then hash out a deal. The interesting thing about this resolution was the time frame for it.

Rob Benedict: 03:51

Typically, multilateral environmental agreements can take up to decades to complete, and this resolution said that they wanted to do that in two years. And to do that, they were going to have five of those intergovernmental negotiating or INC meetings. So that's how it all started, and we progressed from there since 2022.

Callum O'Reilly: 04:13

So who attends these negotiations, and what is the AFPM's role at the negotiations? Yeah.

Rob Benedict: 04:20

The primary party of the negotiations is the member states themselves. So there's over about 185, 190 ish United Nations members, and they'll send negotiating teams to these meetings. In addition to those individuals, there's non governmental observers. So these are people that can go and watch and interact with those negotiators at the meeting. If you're an environmental or an observer as well, you can engage in the process.

Rob Benedict: 04:49

So you could submit comments or make a statement at the meeting if you choose to do so. Those observers, there's a little bit of a mix. There's environmental groups, there's business community, there's scientists. And so that's a second bucket of those who attend. And then the last, I would say, is there is a decent amount of press, specifically given the gravity of the problem and the focus on the solution.

Rob Benedict: 05:10

So there's a good amount of press there. AFPM has attended all the meetings so far. There was five scheduled, but now we're up to seven. And we attended as part of another organization, first meeting, but after that, our members pressed AFPM to get our own observer status. After the first meeting, we got our observer status and that gave us the ability to bring our own members to these events and also engage in the process a little bit more deeply.

Rob Benedict: 05:35

AFPM, what we do is we serve as a resource of those meetings to government. We meet with the different governments talking about the policies that we support and also the ones that we may not. And in the end, I think one key ingredient of why we're there is we actually want an agreement. Sometimes people, especially detractors of our industries might not think so, but in the end, an agreement would be good for our industry. And I think good for addressing a problem that we recognize, which is plastic pollution.

Callum O'Reilly: 06:01

Sure, Rob. So in in light of that, how does AFBM envision a successful global agreement on plastic waste, and what principles should guide its development in your opinion?

Rob Benedict: 06:14

So I think first and foremost, we need to address plastic pollution. Our members recognize that's a problem, and we think that we can play a part of the solution in solving that. Specifically, we support an agreement that gives nations flexibility to address their unique challenges. The problems that The US may face and the solutions that we can offer may be different than a small island nation. That doesn't mean we don't have collective efforts, but overall we think that our goal should be set at a national level and then reported out to this group.

Rob Benedict: 06:44

So that's the first pillar of I'd say what we support is national action plans to address plastic pollution. We also think this should be focused on encouraging better waste management as well as improving circularity. And when I talk about circularity, I'm not just talking about recycling. I'm talking about better waste management, product design. If you if you look at the kind of circular economy, every player on that circle plays a role.

Rob Benedict: 07:11

So I think that's another area we look at. As far as the negotiations themselves, we support coming to a consensus that's specifically a a tenant of multilateral environmental agreements. They always say a good deal. Everybody doesn't love everything they get, and they're willing to compromise. So I think the spirit of compromise is important too.

Rob Benedict: 07:30

And I also think just inclusion of business and industry because we do play a critical role in that product design in potential breakthroughs in recycling and improving recycling rates. So I think that's another part of

Callum O'Reilly: 07:42

it as well. The outcome was ultimately a little disappointing with the negotiations falling through. So what do you think will come next for the negotiations? And will The US remain engaged in the process?

Rob Benedict: 07:55

Yeah. So I'll go back in the time machine a little bit further from this most recent meeting because the meeting we had last November in 2024 in Busan, Korea was the scheduled last meeting of the INC process. And unfortunately, they weren't able to reach an agreement there. So what they did is they kind of left this they never gaveled the meeting shot. So that meeting was originally kind of INC five.

Rob Benedict: 08:21

We then met as last August or just this past couple weeks in August for kind of a continued version of that. So going into that, the pressure was really on and we thought the negotiators would respond to that and really press to reach a deal. Going into the meeting, there was a lot of talk about the spirit of compromise and reaching pragmatic solutions. So that was encouraging. These meetings are very much a roller coaster of kind of will they or won't they get it done?

Rob Benedict: 08:48

And it was slow progress for the first, I'd say, ten days of the meeting. And then things in the last couple of days really kicked up. And we were really hopeful that we were on the cusp of agreement at the end, but ultimately it fell apart. Just there are certain red lines drawn by many different nations on a lot of issues that folks were just willing to budge. So ultimately, we didn't get a deal, which was unfortunate.

Rob Benedict: 09:12

Moving forward, there's a lot of uncertainty in what this looks like. The INC will likely meet again. The problem is to bring the logistics together for one of these meetings is pretty monumental. Not only that, there's the costs of the meeting, not only for the host nation, but for countries. Think about a really small country that has two negotiators that's in the middle of The Pacific.

Rob Benedict: 09:35

They obviously have skin in the game here and they need to be attending those meetings, but they need to be able to afford that as well. I think if we have another meeting, will be either late this year or more likely next year. As far as The US engagement, that remains a wild card, frankly. We supported The US staying involved in this most recent negotiations. As everybody knows, there was an election between INC five point one in November and this meeting in August, And that the Trump administration hasn't been shy.

Rob Benedict: 10:06

You know, there was executive orders on environmental agreements, executive orders on plastic. They're not shy in their opinions on the UN process. We actually push very hard with The US negotiators and the US government to stay involved, and we were happy they did. And frankly, The US really played a moderate voice and bringing things back to compromise at this most recent meeting. But moving forward, there was there's concern that they might walk.

Rob Benedict: 10:33

So we'll have our work cut out for us. Like I said, industry does support this. We'll let the administration know that. We think it can meet a lot of the goals of the Trump administration while addressing plastic pollution. If you look at the Trump administration's first go around, he was the president who signed the Save Our Seas acts both one and two, so there is interest there.

Rob Benedict: 10:55

We hope that they'll stay involved, and we'll continue to do that. And the AFPM is most likely going to stay involved as well because, like I said, we wanna see this cross the finish line.

Callum O'Reilly: 11:03

That was gonna be my next question, actually, Rob. What would the involvement look like for AFPM if the administration decides that they no longer want to proceed with this?

Rob Benedict: 11:12

That's an interesting question. I think our first goal is to not get to that decision point, but, obviously, we'll have to discuss that. Still think the best case scenario is having all the producing nations as well as all the consuming nations in this agreement. I fear that if you see the producing nations, and that includes The US walk, you have a little bit of the status quo where you have a globally fragmented approach to this. I think moving forward, if The US wasn't involved, we'd still urge for consensus, but it would be a lot difficult without the second largest producer of plastics in the world at the table.

Callum O'Reilly: 11:49

Yeah. Of course. Okay. Rob, we really appreciate you joining us and for providing your insights into this recent round of negotiations. And, hopefully, we'll be able to get you back for another update in the near future if another meeting takes place.

Callum O'Reilly: 12:04

Once again, I know you're very busy, so we're really grateful for your time. Thank you very much.

Rob Benedict: 12:07

Thank you. And I'd love to come back again when the agreement's signed, we can talk about, you know, the success we had in reaching in a a compromised agreement. But we'll see.

Callum O'Reilly: 12:17

Let's keep our fingers crossed, and I look forward to that opportunity, Rob.

Rob Benedict: 12:21

Thank you. Thank you.

Callum O'Reilly: 12:23

My thanks again to Rob for sharing his insights and giving us a clear picture of the global plastics treaty negotiations and the role that AFPM has had to play thus far, It was really fascinating to hear how these discussions have been evolving and what principles AFPM believe might guide a successful global agreement on plastic waste. We'll be keeping a keen eye on what comes next and we'll hopefully have an opportunity to catch up with Rob again soon. Thanks for listening and if you're interested in more discussions with AFPM check out my previous conversation with Lara Sweatt, Vice President of Technical and Safety Programmes, about process safety in the downstream sector. And please don't forget to like and subscribe.

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