Ten days of negotiations in Geneva, three years since the start of the talks. What remains? A treaty text full of diplomatic brackets that mark where countries disagree. Almost 1,500 times: we dare not take a decision here.

Hans Stegeman explains that in the end, what remained was a text in which the core – limiting plastic production – had simply melted away. This is no coincidence. Plastic is oil in solid form, a second life for fossil fuels. Limiting production would directly cut into the petrochemical industry's revenue model. No wonder countries with large fossil fuel industries, from Saudi Arabia to the US, fiercely opposed it, supported by lobbyists who this time did not just whisper behind the scenes, but took the stage openly. Their refrain was familiar: ‘Recycling is the solution.’ But by now, it sounds terribly false. 

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