First New Plastics Economy Global Commitment Report Reveals Targets and Initial Steps
Major companies including Carrefour, Colgate Palmolive, Danone, MARS, Nestlé, SC Johnson, The Coca-Cola Co., and Unilever publish data on their annual plastic packaging volumes, most of them for the first time.
A new report published by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative, in collaboration with UN Environment, details how brands, governments, and other organizations are tackling plastic waste. The report follows the launch of the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, which established a vision to stop plastic waste and pollution at source by applying circular economy principles.
More than 250 organizations, representing every part of the plastics supply chain, signed the commitment when it was launched in collaboration with UN Environment in October 2018. Since then the number of signatories has risen to more than 350 and now includes Barilla, Tetra Pak, and L’OCCITANE en provence, as well as the Government of Rwanda and the cities of São Paulo (Brazil) and Ljubljana (Slovenia). Financial institutions with over $4 trillion in assets under management have endorsed the commitment.
The Global Commitment aims to create ‘a new normal’ for plastic packaging, with signatories committing to:
● Eliminate “problematic or unnecessary” plastic packaging and move from single-use to reuse packaging models
● Innovate to ensure 100% of plastic packaging can be easily and safely reused, recycled, or composted by 2025
● Circulate the plastic produced, by significantly increasing the volumes of plastic reused or recycled into new packaging
The report shows progress in increasing the amount of recycled content in plastic packaging. The recycled content targets for plastic in packaging jointly represent 5 million tonnes by 2025.
Read the report here.
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