Food giants commit to plastic targets as part of US Plastics Pact

The US Plastics Pact, a collaborative led by The Recycling Partnership and World Wildlife Fund (WWF), has launched as part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s global Plastics Pact network.

The pact is an initiative to unify diverse public-private stakeholders across the plastics value chain to rethink the way people design, use, and reuse plastics, to create a path toward a circular economy for plastic in the United States.

Companies, Government entities, non-Governmental organisations (NGOs), researchers and other stakeholders have come together as part of the pact and aim to drive collaborative action and deliver a significant system change toward a circular economy for plastic, enabling companies and Governments to collectively meet impactful goals by 2025 that they could not otherwise meet on their own.

“Together, through the US Plastics Pact, we will ignite systems change to accelerate progress toward a circular economy,” said Sarah Dearman, VP of Circular Ventures for The Recycling Partnership. “As the lead organisation that engages the full supply chain to advance circularity in the US, it’s a natural fit for The Recycling Partnership to further collaborative action with other industry leaders to create substantial, long-lasting change for the betterment of our planet. The results from the US Plastics Pact’s efforts to advance packaging, improve recycling, and reduce plastic waste will benefit the entire system and all materials.”

More than 60 ‘Activators’ – including Austin Resource Recovery, Eureka Recycling, Grove Collaborative, Mars, Incorporated, Target, The Coca-Cola Company, Unilever United States, and Walmart have joined the US Plastics Pact, representing each part of the supply and plastics manufacturing chain. By joining, Activators agree to collectively deliver these four targets:

• Define a list of packaging to be designated as problematic or unnecessary by 2021 and take measures to eliminate them by 2025
• By 2025, all plastic packaging is 100 percent reusable, recyclable, or compostable
• By 2025, undertake ambitious actions to effectively recycle or compost 50 percent of plastic packaging
• By 2025, the average recycled content or responsibly sourced bio-based content in plastic packaging will be 30 percent. ​

“Plastic pollution is a global crisis that needs local solutions, and the United States is one of biggest opportunities where regional interventions can result in transformative change around the world,” said Erin Simon, Head, Plastic Waste and Business at World Wildlife Fund. “To do this, WWF sees the US Plastics Pact as the linchpin for uniting the critical stakeholders – industry leaders, waste management systems, and policymakers – under a common vision and action plan for meaningful, measurable impact.”

The next step for the pact will be to create a roadmap, laying out the steps to achieving the targets outlined above. In order to maintain continual and effective collaboration, the US Plastics Pact will seek guidance from a robust Advisory Council, made up of 10 Activator organisations, companies, and Governments.