Engagement Avenues

Youth Plastic Action Network

The Youth Plastic Action Network (YPAN) provides young people with meaningful opportunities to engage in global plastic governance, collaborate with key stakeholders, and drive youth-led solutions to plastic pollution. Through strategic partnerships and advocacy, YPAN ensures that youth voices are integrated into key decision-making processes addressing the full life cycle of plastics.

YPAN empowers youth to contribute to the activities and mandates of key international frameworks/ processes, including:

Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on Plastic Pollution: YPAN mobilizes youth participation in the INC process to advocate for an ambitious and effective International Legally Binding Instrument (ILBI) on plastic pollution. Through policy briefings, consultations, and interventions, YPAN strives to ensure that youth perspectives shape the negotiations.

Previous Statements and Submissions

We demand an ambitious treaty with binding global goals to end plastic pollution by 2035, one that takes into account the entire life-cycle of plastics and leaves no room for ambiguity and violations.

These should include an immediate elimination of hazardous, unnecessary, and single-use plastics, coupled with a safe, just transition to an indigenous knowledge and science-based circular economy that prioritizes reduction and reuse and establishes clear definitions, standards, and labelling. Governments must extend producer and importer responsibilities and hold them accountable for the damage they continue to make.