First meeting of the Basel Convention Plastic Waste Partnership working group

Beau Vallon, Seychelles, from 02 March to 05 March 2020

Highlights: The first meeting of the working group of the Basel Convention Plastic Waste Partnership (PWP) was held in Beau Vallon, Seychelles, from 2 to 5 March 2020. The meeting served as an opportunity to operationalize and initiate the work of the PWP.

Organizers and partners: The meeting was hosted by the Government of the Seychelles and organized by the Secretariat of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions in collaboration with the Africa Institute for Environmentally Sound Management of Hazardous and Other Wastes, as the Basel Convention Regional Centre for English-speaking countries in South Africa (BCRC South Africa). Generous financial support was provided by Canada, Japan, Norway and Switzerland.

Working languages: English

Meeting objectives:

The overall objective of the first meeting of the PWP on Plastic Waste is to set the scene and make arrangements to operationalize and initiate the work of the PWP. In order to achieve this, the meeting will serve as an opportunity to:

  • discuss working modalities of the PWP, including the terms of reference, membership, and financial arrangements;
  • share updates on recent development of relevance to the work of the PWP;
  • present initial findings from the baseline report on plastic waste and the stocktaking of initiatives on plastic waste;
  • discuss matters related to the workplan of the PWP, including the establishment of project groups and prioritization of activities to be undertaken by the project groups;
  • explore modalities for pilot projects to be undertaken by the PWP;
  • discuss preparations for the twelfth meeting of the Open-ended Working Group; and
  • discuss organizational and procedural matters.

Meeting documents

  • Working documents
  • Information documents
  • Reference documents

Outcomes

During the meeting, the PWP working group established the following project groups to further develop and implement activities:

  1. Plastic waste prevention and minimization
  2. Plastic waste collection, recycling and other recovery including financing and related markets
  3. Transboundary movements of plastic waste
  4. Outreach, education and awareness-raising

Co-chairs were elected for each of the project groups. Agreement was also reached on the workplan for the biennium 2002-2021, including the activities of each project group. More information on the project groups and their activities is available here . With regard to the proposed modalities for pilot projects of the PWP working group, the Secretariat was requested to further revise the proposed modalities, taking into account the comments made during the meeting, and to facilitate a process to finalise the modalities through electronic means after the meeting.

Moreover, the working group agreed on the procedure related to the membership of the Partnership and the collection of annual subscriptions. The working group also provisionally adopted its annual budget for 2020 and took note of its provisional budget for 2021.

Field trip and launch of the PWP photography contest

During the meeting, the participants undertook a field trip. This included a visit to a local recycling facility, as well as a beach clean-up in cooperation with three local civil society organization.

The meeting also served as an opportunity to launch a photography contest to promote outreach, education and awareness-raising on the global plastic waste crisis. More information on the PWP photography contest is available here .

Contact information

For questions regarding the meeting, please contact Ms. Susan Wingfield (susan.wingfield@brsmeas.org) and Ms. Melisa Lim (melisa.lim@brsmeas.org).