Ellen MacArthur Foundation: ‘Key 2025 targets ... to be missed'

The industry is going to fall short of key 2025 targets aimed at reducing global plastics pollution, according to a new report.

The Global Commitment 2022 Progress Report, just released by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, hails what it sees as the strong progress in some areas — but not all. And this progress is not evenly distributed across the signatories to the Global Commitment, which has led to a number of sobering observations.

According to the report, governments must considerably and urgently step up their policy efforts, because voluntary industry efforts alone will not be enough to end plastic pollution.

The signatories to the Global Commitment — a group that altogether accounts for more than 20 percent of the plastic packaging market — have set ambitious 2025 targets towards achieving a circular economy for plastics, "in which it never becomes waste."

Today, more than 1,000 businesses, governments, nongovernmental organizations and other groups have thrown their support behind this effort. However, "key 2025 targets are expected to be missed," write the authors of this fourth Progress report.

The target of 100 percent reusable, recyclable, or compostable plastic packaging will almost certainly be missed by most organizations, with flexible packaging and lack of infrastructure being the main barrier.

While investments in designing packaging to be technically recyclable are being made, a more fundamental rethink of packaging, products, and business models will be required for some packaging types or geographies to achieve the target, the report states. It calls for a bold, new approach to address the fast-growing issue of flexible packaging waste.

Good progress has been made regarding the use of recycled materials, with brand and retail signatories doubling their use of recycled content in three years. The rate of progress needs to accelerate, however, to reach the aggregate target of 26 percent post-consumer content by 2025.

And even though the majority of signatories (59 percent) continued to decrease their use of virgin plastic, the group's collective use of virgin plastic has risen back to 2018 levels, according to the report.

As a group, total plastic packaging use rose 4.3 percent in 2021 compared with 2020, an increase that outpaced progress on recycled content. The result is a 2.5 percent increase in the use of virgin plastic compared to 2020. On the other hand, 40 percent of the group also decreased its total plastic packaging use in the same period, showing that significant reduction is possible.

The report also welcomed the first announcements of reuse targets by major brands, although it noted that more broadly "both progress and ambition on reuse are still lacking," although implementation of the various reuse pilots is criticized as being fragmented and not embedded in a business strategy that could lead to reuse at scale.

On the positive side, the report emphasizes the transparency which the Global Commitment has brought that was hitherto lacking. Before joining the Global Commitment, many businesses were unaware of how much plastic packaging they were putting on the market; today, signatories' plastic usage and progress towards the targets is transparent and publicly available.

The Global Commitment has also mobilized over $10 billion of investments, and "catalyzed tough conversations, making it essential to 'build on this momentum and accelerate action in all areas."

As well, the Global Commitment represents a very useful framework for action by governments and industry, directly contributing to the shift to a circular economy for plastics, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation noted. It cited a resolution to create an international plastic treaty on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment adopted by the Member States at the fifth United Nations Environment Assembly.

Graham Forbes, Greenpeace's USA Global Plastics Project Leader, disagreed.

"The report clearly shows that voluntary commitments from companies to address plastic pollution have failed. Instead of tackling the plastic pollution crisis, big brands like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Mars actually increased the amount of plastic they create since the EMF Global Commitment was launched in 2018," he said.

"The EMF report pours cold water on the celebrated commitments made by big corporations who signed on to this high-profile project to eliminate plastic pollution. This underlines the need for governments to ensure that the global plastic treaty, which starts negotiations shortly, delivers major reductions in plastic production and use and accelerates a just transition to the reuse economy we need. Anything less than this is a disservice to our communities and our climate."