Ellen MacArthur Foundation and UN Environment Programme publish second progress report on the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment

The report sets out calls to action for businesses and governments to make plastic pollution a thing of the past – including the need for ambitious reduction targets, and the creation of an international framework on plastic pollution.

Aiming towards an ambitious set of 2025 targets, the Global Commitment was launched in October 2018. Now it unites more than 500 companies behind one vision of a circular economy for plastic. This report is the second of the annual New Plastics Economy Global Commitment progress reports since its launch. It looks at how Global Commitment signatories, which together account for more than 20% of the plastic packaging market, are progressing against their 2025 targets on plastics.

The report shows that significant advances have been made in two key areas: the incorporation of recycled content in plastic packaging and eliminating the most commonly identified problematic categories of plastic packaging; such as PS, PVC, undetectable carbon black, single-use plastic bags, and straws.

However, there has been limited progress on increasing recyclability of plastic packaging and on reducing the need for single-use packaging altogether. Progress on shifting towards reusable packaging is limited and elimination efforts remain focused on a relatively small set of materials and formats.

While progress has been made between 2018 and 2019, much more must be done and at greater speed, to achieve the 2025 targets and tackle plastic pollution. In response to this report’s findings, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and UNEP call for urgent actions by businesses and policymakers that are vital to make plastic pollution a thing of the past.

They call on business to:

  1. Take bold action on packaging types that are not recyclable today – either developing and executing a credible roadmap to make recycling work, or decisively innovating away from these packaging types.
  2. Set ambitious reduction targets.

Recognising that voluntary action by industry alone cannot deliver change on the scale and at the pace needed, they also call on governments to:

  1. Establish policies and mechanisms, that provide dedicated and stable funding for collection and sorting, through fair industry contributions, such as extended producer responsibility (EPR), without which recycling is unlikely to ever scale.
  2. Set a global direction and create an international framework for action, through the UN Environment Assembly, building on the vision of a circular economy for plastics.

Brightplus was one of the earliest signatories to the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment and is a proud contributor to this latest report. Through our work and innovation we are committed to a world free from plastic pollution.

Read the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and UN Environment Programme New Plastics Economy Global Commitment 2020 progress report to learn more about what we, and others around the world, are doing to make it a reality.

https://emf.org/global-commitment

About Brightplus

Brightplus Oy is a leading biosourced materials company, based in Finland. Headquarters are in the city of Tampere, with Production and Design Studios in Oulu. The company manufactures, sells, and licenses its green chemistry and side stream based BrightBio®® material to leading global manufacturers of packaging products for major brands. We work closely with customers from an early stage, to ensure that solutions are practical from the outset and fully comply with their existing processing methods, without the need for capital expenditure.

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