Lanzarote Declaration, MICRO 2022 for the UN Treaty on Plastic Pollution.

As members of the scientific community, we welcome the emergence of the United Nations Global Treaty on Plastic Pollution as an invaluable opportunity to address plastic pollution. We represent the MICRO community, which includes over 2500 researchers, who recently came together to share 500 oral and poster presentations in an Open Science context for the international MICRO 2022 conference (14-18 November 2022) under the Patronage of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The 2022 Lanzarote Declaration, offered with the intention of supporting Treaty Negotiators, reflects the most recent collective effort of the MICRO community. During the final day of MICRO 2022, researchers met in small groups to discuss three questions: 1/ What do we consider as key evidence we in the MICRO community can provide to support the UN Treaty negotiations? What is most important for policy makers to understand about plastics and plastic pollution? 2/ In the UN Treaty, what approaches do we want to see for eliminating plastic pollution, keeping in mind the entire plastic production to post-consumer chain? What approaches must be avoided? 3/ If the intention is to stop plastic pollution, what are the implications for plastic research moving forward? And how can our research contribute to assessing the effectiveness of policies & approaches to eliminate plastic pollution? We present here the summary of responses provided by the MICRO 2022 community in the : Lanzarote Declaration, MICRO 2022 for the UN Treaty on Plastic Pollution.