Led by the Recycling Partnership and World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the collaborative U.S. Plastics Pact was launched as part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s global Plastics Pact network. The U.S. Plastics Pact is an ambitious initiative to unify diverse public-private stakeholders across the plastics value chain to rethink the way we design, use, and reuse plastics, to create a path toward a circular economy for plastic in the United States.
The project brings together companies, government entities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), researchers, and other stakeholders in a pre-competitive platform for industry-led innovation. By joining the U.S. Plastics Pact, 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.
- Ensure all plastic packaging is 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025
- Undertake ambitious actions to effectively recycle or compost 50% of plastic packaging by 2025,
- Ensure the average recycled content or responsibly sourced bio-based content in plastic packaging reaches 30% by 2025
Henkel North America, Nestle, Kimberly-Clark, Mondelēz, among others, have all announced joining the US Plastics Pact with the intent to publicly report every year their progress against these targets. The U.S. Plastics Pact formed a robust Advisory Council made up of 10 Activator organizations, companies, and governments that include Amcor, Balcones Resources Inc., Austin Resource Recovery (City of Austin, TX), Eureka Recycling, Grove Collaborative, Mars, Incorporated, Target, The Coca-Cola Company, Unilever United States, and Walmart, Inc.
The first task of the founding Activators of the U.S. Plastics Pact will be to establish a “roadmap” in Q1 2021 to identify key milestones and national solutions to achieving the U.S. targets and realize a circular economy in which plastic never becomes waste.
The U.S. Plastics Pact joins other national Pacts (in the UK, France, Chile, The Netherlands, South Africa, and Portugal) as well as the regional European Plastics Pact as members of the global Plastics Pact network led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. This unique platform drives ambitious action towards a common vision for a circular economy for plastics, exchanging insights and best practices across countries and regions to accelerate the transition.
