US Plastics Pact calls for recycling rate of 50 percent

More than 60 companies, plastics trade groups and governments in the U.S. unveiled an ambitious national target Aug. 25 that aims to boost packaging recycling and composting rates to 50 percent and substantially increase recycled content.

The U.S. Plastics Pact, which joins seven similar agreements globally, is more a statement of principles than action plan at this point, but one plastics recycling group that has signed on called it the most important step to boost that industry in two decades.

Organizers will spend the next few months crafting an implementation road map that in practical terms aims to scale back the use of virgin plastic in packaging by 2025.

The signers include major buyers of plastics packaging, like Coca-Cola Co. and Walmart Inc., as well as plastics packaging maker Amcor Ltd. and industry groups such as the Association of Plastic Recyclers, the National Association for PET Container Resources and groups for beverage and consumer products makers. Environmental groups have also joined.

APR President and CEO Steve Alexander, who sits on the pact's advisory council, called it the "single most important effort to address the growth and sustainability of plastics recycling in the past 20 years."

"This effort will ensure that brand companies will be publicly held to achieve the sustainability commitments they have made," he said. "There has never been another program like this."

An executive with The Recycling Partnership, one of the lead organizers, said participants believe a transformational, rather than incremental, approach is needed.

"We hold no bones that this is an ambitious set of targets," said Stephanie Kersten-Johnston, director of innovation at the Falls Church, Va.-based group. "I don't think this group would be coming together if we didn't believe we've got to make progress. Whether or not we'll get to the target is obviously a very big question."

Besides the Recycling Partnership, the U.S. agreement is being administered by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF), which operates the other plastic pacts worldwide, as well as the World Wildlife Fund. Progress will be reported yearly through a WWF website. In some ways, the pact builds on commitments many of the companies made individually as part of EMF's New Plastics Economy project.

While implementing plans will be worked out in coming months, the pact calls for signatories to commit collectively to four targets by 2025:

• Fifty percent of plastic packaging either effectively recycled or composted.

• Thirty percent recycled content or responsibly sourced bio-based content in plastic packaging.

• All plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable.

• Development of a list of problematic plastic packaging to be eliminated by 2025.

They are clearly ambitious targets when you consider that U.S. government figures show that only 14.7 percent of all plastic in containers and packaging was recycled in 2017.

The most widely recycled plastic packaging in the U.S., the PET beverage bottle, has a nationwide recycling rate of only around 30 percent.

Similarly, recycled content has a large gap to jump. EMF estimated that recycled content in plastic packaging averaged four percent globally in 2018, although in some specific products it's much higher.

NAPCOR, which represents the PET bottling industry, said it believes the groundwork exists to achieve the goal for its sector.

"At NAPCOR, our focus is on PET, and with that, our industry has a strong foundation to achieve these ambitious goals," said NAPCOR Executive Director Darrel Collier. "Yes, it is a stretch goal."

An environmental group not involved with the pact questioned whether a voluntary agreement will be able to achieve those large jumps in recycling rates.

"It's certainly a well-intentioned effort, but ultimately its impact is likely to be limited as it's another voluntary effort that can only make as much progress as members agree to," said Conrad MacKerron, senior vice president at shareholder advocacy group As You Sow in Berkeley, Calif.

"Given 20 years of monitoring and pursuing corporate commitments, it seems highly unlikely you can get anywhere close to a 50 percent plastic recycling rate with a voluntary effort," he said. "Without mandates, we have seen time and again how easy it is for or companies to pull back from voluntary commitments."

MacKerron suggested the group agree on national legislation and build support for that.

"If the pact could get a big industry coalition unified around a national plan for producer responsibility that harmonizes concerns about the overlap of deposit laws and EPR, and is willing to use lobbying clout to press for national legislation, that could be quite impactful," he said.

The pact, however, doesn't see itself as directly lobbying on policy issues.

Kersten-Johnston said that while "there's no intent for the pact to be a lobbying entity," it could work on research around policy questions. Its website said one way the pact could influence would be working collectively around "purposefully designed transformative national legislation."

Some of the pact signatories like the American Beverage Association and the Consumer Brands Association have sizable Washington lobbying efforts, and CBA launched an effort around recycling policy earlier this year.

Plastic packaging maker Amcor, which also sits on the group's advisory council, said it hopes the effort can bring systemic change to recycling.

"We are already working with customers to increased recycled materials in packaging and increase recycling rates worldwide and now, our collaboration with other companies, government organizations and NGOs will bring systemic change that will further benefit the planet," said Eric Roegner, president of Amcor Rigid Packaging, based in Ann Arbor, Mich.

The pact's members will now spend several months writing a road map for how to achieve the goals.

One of the first steps will be more specifically defining what plastic packaging will be covered under the agreement, said Kersten-Johnston: "One of the first tasks of the collective will be to agree on the scope for reporting purposes."

While it's too soon to say what the U.S. road map would look like, the United Kingdom's version has nearly identical goals to the U.S., if that is suggestive of how the U.S. pact might take shape.

The biggest difference is in recycling rate targets. The U.K. pact, which launched in late 2018, targets having 70 percent of plastic packaging recycled or composted by 2025, compared with 50 percent in the U.S.

The U.K., however, had a better position at the starting line, with the pact noting a 46 percent recycling rate for plastic packaging in 2017, compared with less than 15 percent in the U.S. Pact organizers say they are written to reflect local circumstances.

Both countries, however, call for 30 percent recycled content. The U.K. version does that by outlining specific targets by packaging types.

It says PET bottles should have 50 percent recycled content by 2025, polyethylene bottles should have 40-45 percent, and PE and polypropylene films a 10 percent recycled content target, for example.

Kersten-Johnston said the U.S. agreement may include secondary or tertiary packaging in its calculations on recycled content, which could help create more demand pull for recycled plastic as the pact gets underway.

The U.K. pact did endorse some form of producer responsibility, a policy that's sometimes controversial in the United States because it has industry providing much more funding for recycling systems. The U.K. plan refers to producer responsibility as its "sustaining investment."

Some suggest it would be very hard for the U.S. to achieve a 50 percent recycling rate target without major policy changes.

Susan Collins, president of the Container Recycling Institute in Culver City, Calif., said you would need to more than double existing bottle bills to get to a 50 percent recycling rate nationwide for PET bottles.

Collins, who is not a signatory of the pact, estimated the U.S. would need additional bottle bills in states covering 100 million people, along with improvement to the current deposit laws in 10 states covering 90 million people.

Or you would need a national law with a 10-cent deposit, she said: "It would not be possible to reach the 50 percent mark without container deposits."

NAPCOR, the PET trade group, said a multipronged approach will be needed to achieve a 50 percent recycling rate for PET containers.

"Education, increased infrastructure capacity, as well as other incentives will be needed to achieve that goal," Collier said, pointing to his group's PositivelyPET and the ABA's Every Bottle Back campaign.

He said most recycled PET in the U.S. doesn't go back into bottles, but instead is used in fibers like carpets and clothing.

"We don't see that changing," he said. "To increase to 30 percent recycled content in five years, we need to get more material in the system to ultimately end up as feedstock for PET containers."

The pact does not see its work as static. Kersten-Johnston said the group's signers — or activators, as they call themselves — hope to convince more companies and organizations to join in the future.

She said they want to "use critical mass, well-considered policy approaches and key supply chain relationships to influence beyond the remit of the organizations you will initially see listed as activators."

"The intent to influence beyond the pact members will be particularly important when it comes to the rate question," she said.

Kersten-Johnston said the pact's work also will look at consumer behavior.

"We can't move the rate without extensive improvements in how consumers are behaving when it comes to end of life plastic," she said.

The group's founding members include major consumer product makers like Unilever plc, Danone, Clorox Co., Colgate-Palmolive Co. and Mars Inc., as well as retailers like Target and a few local and state governments.

It's not clear how much of the U.S. plastic packaging chain will ultimately be covered when the agreement's road map is worked out, but the U.K. version, for comparison, says its members cover 80 percent of plastic packaging on supermarket shelves and 50 percent in the broader market.

Other pacts have been announced in Chile, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa and a pan-European version. A pact for Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Island nations is also in discussion.

Pact organizers say they see the different global agreements working in complement to one another.

Similarly, Unilever North America, which sits on the U.S. pact's advisory council, said it sees collective action as the way to meet the U.S. agreement's strong targets and develop a plan that can be brought "to scale."

"We have set aggressive targets to tackle plastic waste, but they cannot be delivered by us acting alone," said Viviana Alvarez, Unilever's head of sustainability for North America. "We can start to address the plastic waste issue by taking fast and transformative action at every point in the plastics cycle."