Global brands' virgin plastic use on track for sharp drop by 2025

The latest report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) points out that the use of virgin plastic in the packaging of major brands that have signed the Global Commitment is expected to fall by nearly 20%.

● The 2021 New Plastics Economy Global Commitment progress report shows that after decades of growth, the virgin plastic use of brand owners and retailers that signed the Global Commitment showed signs of peaking in 2021, and is expected to fall by nearly 20% by 2025.

● The progress achieved so far has largely been driven by recycling and reuse, but this is not enough to solve the plastic pollution problem - all parties urgently need to step up efforts to eliminate the use of single-use plastic packaging.

● Calls for a global agreement on plastic pollution are showing unprecedented momentum.

New data shows that brand owners and retailers in the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment (hereafter "the Global Commitment") have reduced virgin plastic use in their packaging for two consecutive years.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the United Nations Environment Programme jointly stated that three years after the launch of the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, the virgin plastic use of the signatories has shown signs of peaking and is now on a downward trend.

In 2021 the Global Commitment added a mandatory virgin plastic reduction target, and all 65 brand owner and retailer signatories now have such a target in place. The new commitment will further consolidate and accelerate the downward trend in virgin plastic use. If the new commitment is achieved, absolute virgin plastic use will fall by nearly 20% by 2025 compared with 2018.

It is estimated that if both the new targets and the existing commitments are achieved, the production of virgin plastic will be reduced by 8 million tonnes per year by 2025, equivalent to avoiding the extraction of 40 million barrels of oil.

Reducing the use of virgin plastic is a welcome trend, but brand owners and retailers mainly focus on gradually replacing virgin plastic with recycled plastic in their current plans and future planning. However, this is only part of the solution and cannot address the total amount of plastic packaging placed on the market. At present, efforts to eliminate single-use packaging are still insufficient: the reusable rate of the signatories' plastic packaging is less than 2%, and more than half of the signatories have a reuse rate of zero for their plastic packaging.

New industry commitments and action plans will bring tangible progress to plastic circularity

All packaging consumer goods, retail and packaging manufacturing companies that have signed the Global Commitment have pledged that by 2025 all of their plastic packaging will be 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable.

All packaged consumer goods and retail companies that have signed the Global Commitment have also pledged that by 2025 the average share of recycled material in their plastic packaging will reach 25%, about 10 times the current global average estimate. Some companies have set even higher recycled material targets: Werner & Mertz, POSITIV.A and IWC Schaffhausen have set a target of 100%; Bio-D has set 75%; Diageo and L'Occitane en Provence have set 40%; and L'Oreal, M & S, Accor and Sealed Air have also set their targets at 30%.

As the first resin producers to sign the Global Commitment, Borealis and Indorama Ventures have committed to setting specific recycled material targets in order to transform their current business model based on energy extraction and virgin materials into a business model based on material circularity.

To achieve their 2025 targets, packaged consumer goods, retail and packaging manufacturing companies will generate a total demand of 5.4 million tonnes for recycled plastic - the largest commitment to date for the use of recycled plastic in plastic packaging. Since the launch of the Global Commitment in 2018, signatories' use of post-consumer recycled plastic has increased by 60%. In order to accelerate the decoupling of plastic use from fossil feedstocks, in 2021 the Global Commitment added a virgin plastic reduction target for brand owners and retailers. If the new commitment is achieved, absolute virgin plastic use will fall by nearly 20% by 2025 compared with 2018.

Dame Ellen MacArthur, founder and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, said: "Recycling and reuse alone cannot solve the plastic pollution problem, and eliminating single-use packaging is an important part of the solution. But our report shows that signatories have invested very little in this area, which is alarming. We need to focus far more urgently on upstream innovation and rethink how products are delivered using packaging-free or reusable packaging. This not only avoids the generation of waste from the design stage, but also means we can avoid carbon emissions from the design stage while creating new business opportunities. It is estimated that shifting just 20% of plastic packaging from single-use to reusable represents a business opportunity of about USD 10 billion."

Voluntary initiatives such as the Global Commitment have begun to bring about change, but a large number of companies and countries have recognized that voluntary initiatives alone are far from enough to solve plastic pollution. The signatories of the Global Commitment cover only 20% of the world's plastic packaging. We need a coordinated global response mechanism so that the entire industry and all government departments can take action at scale more quickly.

Calls for a global agreement on plastic pollution are growing. More than 80 leading companies and 119 governments have called for a global agreement to tackle plastic pollution, and more than 2 million people have signed a public petition in support. The second part of the fifth session of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA 5.2) in February 2022 will be a key moment, when governments will negotiate next steps, including whether to launch intergovernmental negotiations on a global agreement.

Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, said: "The Global Commitment shows us that concerted voluntary action by actors across the value chain, including governments, has begun to turn the global tide against plastic pollution. All signatories report their progress in a transparent way and against agreed metrics, and this approach deserves praise and emulation. These frontrunners also prove that we can decouple the many benefits of plastic from the use of virgin plastic, and these pioneering actions can be driven and scaled up through a comprehensive, inclusive global approach."

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-378706.html