Engaging nearly 100 organizations, the U.S. Plastics Pact Roadmap outlines steps, including extended producer responsibility, to realize a circular economy for plastics in the United States
Contact:
Scott Cassel, 617-513-3954, scott@productstewardship.us
BOSTON, Mass. — The Product Stewardship Institute, Inc. (PSI), a national nonprofit dedicated to reducing the health and environmental impacts of consumer products, today helped launch the U.S. Plastics Pact’s (“U.S. Pact”) “Roadmap to 2025.” This roadmap is an aggressive national strategy illustrating how the U.S. Pact, PSI, and fellow signatories will achieve each of the U.S. Pact’s four 2025 targets through specific actions, responsibilities, and interim timeframes to realize a circular economy for plastics in the United States by 2025.
Launched in August 2020, the U.S. Plastics Pact is a consortium led by the Recycling Partnership and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) as part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s (EMF’s) global Plastics Pact network. A broad coalition has signed on to the roadmap, a key component of which is extended producer responsibility (EPR), a policy model in which manufacturers are responsible for the post-consumer management of their products and packaging. Today, EMF also released a position paper recognizing EPR as a necessary part of solving the challenges of packaging waste on a global scale.
“It’s encouraging to see so many former opponents of EPR supporting this vital concept via the Plastics Pact,” said Scott Cassel, PSI CEO and founder. “We will need everyone — government, industry, and nongovernmental organizations — working together on EPR policy if we’re going to achieve lasting change for a circular economy.”
As a signatory (or “Activator”) of the U.S. Pact, PSI joins other stakeholders across the plastics value chain in accelerating progress toward the four 2025 targets below. This will involve inspiring and supporting upstream innovation through coordinated initiatives such as rethinking products, packaging, and business models in order to transition away from today’s take-make-waste model to a circular economy in which plastics never become waste. The roadmap goals are as follows:
- Define a list of packaging to be designated as problematic or unnecessary by 2021 and take measures to eliminate them by 2025.
- 100% of plastic packaging will be reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025.
- By 2025, undertake ambitious actions to effectively recycle or compost 50% of plastic packaging.
- By 2025, the average recycled content or responsibly sourced bio-based content in plastic packaging will be 30%.
“The U.S. Pact Roadmap is an important move in making packaging more sustainable,” said Sydney Harris, PSI’s senior associate for policy and programs and packaging lead. “With the recognition that EPR is a necessary tool for achieving circularity for plastics, Pact Activators have taken a significant step toward transformational change in our packaging economy. As a Pact participant, I look forward to what we can achieve together.”
The U.S. Pact’s Roadmap is designed to kick-start action and help U.S. industry leaders and packaging producers develop a national strategy, advance shared goals, and measure the strength of progress through annual reporting. This national strategy will assist Pact Activators in reaching ambitious goals by 2025 that they could not otherwise meet on their own through sharing knowledge, optimizing investments, identifying gaps, overcoming systemic barriers, and implementing policies.
“The current state of U.S. infrastructure, coupled with the lack of incentives to utilize recycled content in plastic packaging, have put immense strain on the value chain,” said Emily Tipaldo, executive director of the U.S. Plastics Pact. “The Roadmap is designed to help U.S. industry leaders act on the significant, systemwide change needed to realize a circular economy for plastics by 2025. The timeframe is short, and the workload is immense, but if we choose to do nothing, the visions of a circular economy across the U.S. will give way to the status quo. We look forward to working with all our Activators to drive this critical change.”
The roadmap holds all Activators of the U.S. Pact accountable to sustainability objectives by creating the pathway in which companies, governments, and nongovernmental organizations can successfully ensure that plastics remain in the U.S. economy and out of the environment for years to come.
To read the full U.S. Pact Roadmap, please visit the U.S. Pact website.
To read the EMF position paper on EPR, please visit the EMF website.
# # #
About the Product Stewardship Institute (PSI)
PSI is a national nonprofit working to reduce the health and environmental impacts that result when consumer products and packaging enter the waste stream. PSI takes a unique approach to solving waste and recycling problems by bringing key stakeholders together in well-designed dialogues to forge lasting agreements rooted in producer responsibility, design change, and sustainable end-of-life management. PSI works on both voluntary and legislative product stewardship initiatives and has built capacity for product stewardship in the U.S. for the past 20 years. We have done this together with 47 state environmental agency members, hundreds of local government members, and over 120 partners from business, universities, organizations, and international governments. Learn more at productstewardship.us and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
About the Recycling Partnership
The Recycling Partnership is the action agent transforming the U.S. residential recycling system for good. Our team operates at every level of the recycling value chain and works on the ground with thousands of communities to transform underperforming recycling programs and tackle circular economy challenges. As the leading organization in the country that engages the full recycling supply chain, from working with companies to make their packaging more circular and help them meet climate and sustainability goals, to working with government to develop policy solutions to address the systemic needs of the U.S. recycling system, the Recycling Partnership positively impacts recycling at every step in the process. Since 2014, the nonprofit change agent diverted 375 million pounds of new recyclables from landfills, saved 968 million gallons of water, avoided more than 420,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases, and drove significant reductions in targeted contamination rates. Learn more at recyclingpartnership.org.
About World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
WWF is one of the world’s leading conservation organizations, working in nearly 100 countries for over half a century to help people and nature thrive. With the support of more than 5 million members worldwide, WWF is dedicated to delivering science-based solutions to preserve the diversity and abundance of life on Earth, halt the degradation of the environment and combat the climate crisis. Visit worldwildlife.org to learn more and keep up with the latest sustainability news by following @WWFBetterBiz on Twitter and signing up for their newsletter and news alerts.
About the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s global Plastics Pact Network
Since 2016, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative has rallied businesses and governments behind a positive vision of a circular economy for plastic. Its 2016 and 2017 New Plastics Economy reports captured worldwide headlines, revealing the financial and environmental costs of waste plastic and pollution. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Plastics Pact Network is a globally aligned response to plastic waste and pollution, which enables vital knowledge sharing and coordinated action. It is a network of national and regional (multi-country) initiatives which brings together key stakeholders to implement solutions towards a circular economy for plastic, tailored to each geography. Each initiative is led by a local organization and unites businesses, government institutions, NGOs and citizens behind a common vision, with an ambitious set of local targets.
Further information at emf.org/plastics-pact and on Twitter at @circulareconomy.