Eleven companies take major step towards a new plastics economy

Eleven leading brands, retailers, and packaging companies work towards 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging by 2025 or earlier.

Today, as part of its New Plastics Economy initiative, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the list of leading brands, retailers, and packaging companies working towards using 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging by 2025 or earlier has grown to 11 – Amcor, Ecover, evian, L’Oréal, Mars, M&S;, PepsiCo, The Coca-Cola Company, Unilever, Walmart, and Werner & Mertz – together representing more than 6 million tonnes of plastic packaging per year.

Paul Polman, CEO Unilever, said: “It is welcome news that many other major companies are making their own commitments to address ocean plastic waste. Yet as a consumer goods industry, we need to go much further, much faster, in addressing the challenge of single use plastics by leading a transition away from the linear take-make-dispose model of consumption, to one which is truly circular by design.”

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation is calling for the whole industry to follow their lead. As a second step, industry pioneers must ensure their packaging is being recycled, reused or composted in practice, and is made of recycled content.

Company announcements

AMCOR

Amcor is leading the development and manufacture of packaging that is better for the environment, customers and consumers – by being the first global packaging company pledging to develop all its packaging to be recyclable or reusable by 2025, significantly increasing its use of recycled material, and helping drive consistently greater recycling of packaging around the world.

DANONE / EVIAN

Danone announced that its iconic brand evian, whose bottles are already 100% recyclable, will make all of its plastic bottles from 100% recycled plastic by 2025, a move that will see the natural mineral water brand adopt a circular approach to its plastic usage. evian plans to achieve this through pioneering partnerships to redesign its packaging, accelerate recycling initiatives and clean up plastic waste from nature. Danone is committed to co-building the circular economy of packaging and will launch its ambitious broader plans in the coming months.

ECOVER

All of Ecover’s packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable. As part of its ambition to rethink the way it uses plastic, Ecover has set itself the bold ambition to use 100% recycled plastic in all bottles by 2020, to introduce recycled content into its caps from 2018 and to trial new, non-plastic, fully biodegradable materials that are still recyclable by 2020. As a first step, in January 2018, Ecover will launch its new 100% recycled and 100% recyclable washing-up liquid bottle in Europe.”

L’OREAL

“L'Oréal commits that all of its plastic packaging will be rechargeable, refillable, recyclable or compostable by 2025. This is in line with and a continuation of L'Oréal’s efforts over the past years working towards the continuous improvement of the environmental and social impact of 100% of its new products by 2020, as part of its «Sharing Beauty With All» sustainability program.”

MARS

“At Mars, we will continue to work towards 100% recyclability of our packaging by 2025. Packaging innovation is one way we can reduce our carbon footprint in line with the science-based targets of our Sustainable in a Generation Plan.”

M&S;

“Marks & Spencer announced that all its plastic packaging in the UK will not only be 100% recyclable, but also 'widely recycled' in the UK by 2022. It will work to eliminate packaging that strays into the environment (particularly oceans) and actively design out packaging parts that can’t be reused or recycled. It will introduce products with reclaimed social plastics as a component, providing positive social benefit to the communities from which the materials are sourced. In addition, M&S; will assess the feasibility for all its plastic packaging to be made from one polymer group by 2025 to reduce consumer confusion and to improve recycling.”

PEPSICO

“PepsiCo announced its ambition to design 100% of its packaging to be recyclable, compostable or biodegradable, increase recycled materials in its plastic packaging, reduce packaging’s carbon impact, and in partnership with the PepsiCo Foundation, work to increase recycling rates by 2025.”

THE COCA-COLA COMPANY

“The Coca-Cola Company has announced a bold, ambitious goal to help collect and recycle 100% of the packaging it sells by 2030. This is supported by two key goals – to continue toward making all its consumer packaging 100% recyclable by 2025 and to have 50% recycled content in its packaging by 2030. Coca-Cola’s plan, called ‘World Without Waste”, will work with a number of partners to achieve this global goal for packaging that includes design, collection and partnering – and encompasses the whole life of the package.

UNILEVER

“Unilever announced its commitment to help transform global plastic packaging material flows by: ensuring all of its plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025; increasing its use of recycled plastic content in its packaging to at least 25% by 2025 (against a 2015 baseline); publishing the full “palette” of plastics materials used in its packaging by 2020 to help create a plastics protocol for the industry; and helping tackle the industry-wide sachet waste issue, by investing in proving, and then sharing with industry, a technical solution to recycle multi-layered sachets – CreaSolv.”

WALMART

“Walmart announced that 100% of its Private Brand packaging will be recyclable by 2025 and aims to reduce environmental and social impacts of private brand and national brand packaging. Beyond its own organization, Walmart encourages suppliers to participate in Project Gigaton, by setting goals to improve packaging optimization, recyclability, and the use of recycled and sustainably sourced materials to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And the Walmart Foundation supports the Closed Loop Fund to help improve access to recycling and strengthen the recycling infrastructure.”

WERNER & MERTZ

“The Werner & Mertz Group, whose packaging is already 100% recyclable, announced its commitment to use 100% recycled plastic in at least 70 million bottles each year as of 2017, corresponding to 65% of its entire annual bottle volume, aiming to go up to 100% for all its consumer goods packaging by 2025. In line with the Group's integrally sustainable philosophy, the packaging caps and lids will be made of used plastic (recycled material) while labels, printing inks and adhesives will be designed in such a way that the quality of the recyclates will be improved in the subsequent recycling process.”

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