Quest for a Plastic Packaging Circular Economy

Eliminating unnecessary plastic, sustainable innovation, and circulating plastic within the economy are the three goals of more than 450 global partner companies seeking to keep plastic waste out of the environment.

Kim Overstreet
May 11th, 2020
Sustain 4

The New Plastics Economy Global Commitment Foundation, led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in collaboration with the UN Environment Program, is working towards a plastics circular economy with zero plastic waste.

Over 450 partner companies have signed up for the program including Apple, Walmart, PepsiCo, Nestle, The Coca-Cola Company, Danone, Mondelez, Mars, Unilever, Johnson and Johnson and SC Johnson - representing 20% of global plastic packaging, with the end goal of 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable plastic packaging by the year 2025. Governments, NGOs, universities, industry associations, and investors, are also represented in the partner companies.

See: Sustainable Package Reformatting on the Rise

According to PMMI Business Intelligence’s new report “Packaging Sustainability: A Changing Landscape,” there are three actions that member companies are taking to achieve these goals:

1)   Eliminate all problematic and unnecessary plastic items.

2)    Innovate to ensure that plastics are reusable, recyclable or compostable.

3)    Circulate all plastic items to keep them in the economy and out of the environment.

Said one Senior Manager at a Personal Care company, “We have pledged to reduce our use of virgin plastic packaging in all our packaged products and collect more packaging than we use by 2025, creating a circular economy for recycled plastic.”

See: Pain Brings Gain: Packaging Redesign is Worth the Risk

Find out more about the program here.

Source: PMMI Business Intelligence, “Packaging Sustainability: A Changing Landscape 2020”

Download the FREE Executive Summary below, or PMMI Members can download the entire report here.

Make plans to visit PACK EXPO International in Chicago, November 8-11, to see on-trend sustainable processing and packaging machinery and materials.


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