G7 ministers commit to ending plastic pollution by 2040

SAPPORO, Apr 16 (AFP): G7 environment and climate ministers pledged to end new plastic pollution in their countries by 2040, they said in a statement released Sunday after talks in northern Japan.

"We are committed to end plastic pollution, with the ambition to reduce additional plastic pollution to zero by 2040," it said.

Germany, France, Canada, Britain and the EU are already part of a multi-national coalition that made the same pledge last year.

But this is the first time the remaining Group of Seven members-Japan, the United States and Italy-have made the 2040 commitment.

German Environment Minister Steffi Lemke hailed the bloc's new plastic pollution pledge as an "ambitious goal" at a press conference following the two-day talks in Sapporo.

The phase-out will be achieved by "promoting sustainable consumption and production of plastics, increasing their circularity in the economy, and environmentally sound management of waste", the statement said.

Plastic waste has doubled globally in 20 years and only nine percent is successfully recycled, according to the OECD group of developed countries.

The United Nations says the volume of plastic entering the oceans will nearly triple by 2040.

Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, a day after escaping an apparent attack, vowed to ensure the safety of Group of Seven dignitaries visiting his country, beginning with tighter security for climate ministers gathering in Sapporo.

"My security has become even heavier this morning. It's so tight I think it is going to be difficult to go out into the city," Japan's environment minister, Akihiro Nishimura, said at a hotel in the northern Japanese city where he was hosting his G7 counterparts.

Bodyguards bundled Kishida to safety on Saturday after a man threw what appeared to be a smoke bomb at him during an election campaign stop at a fishing port in western Japan.

Heightened security "reflects an increasing challenge of being in politics these days," said Canada's minister of natural resources, Jonathan Wilkinson.

"Unfortunately I think that some of this has to do with the social media and some of the misinformation which spreads online," Wilkinson told Reuters in Sapporo.