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International talks are taking place in Paris to tackle single use plastics.

Business Matter's Rahul Tandon spoke to Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law about how the world can reduce it's reliance on the use of plastic.

Carroll explains: "More than 40% of all plastics that are being produced are being used for plastic packaging that comes and goes in our lives... So much of plastics are designed to be thrown away."

"We have to produce less plastic if we're going to address the plastic crisis," says Carroll, arguing, "One of the fundamental reasons that plastics are so cheap is because 99% of what goes into plastics is oil and gas. We know we need to phase oil and gas out of our economy. And that means the oil and gas production processes themselves are actually massively subsidising plastic producing so if you stop subsiding... oil and gas plastics will become more expensive."

(Photo: Pile of single use plastic bottles and packaging. Credit: Getty Images)

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