US Plastics Pact, backed by big firms, pushes cuts in 'problematic' packaging

Seeing it as a crucial step to improve recycling, major companies behind the U.S. Plastics Pact say they plan to stop using 11 "problematic" materials like polystyrene and PVC in packaging by 2025.

The Jan. 25 announcement from the pact is most noteworthy for who's in the group — major consumer brands and retailers like Coca-Cola Co. and Walmart Inc. that together account for one-third of the plastics packaging used in the United States.

While the phaseout targets are voluntary and two-thirds of the industry sits outside the agreement, pact supporters say the sizable companies lining up behind the plan sends a strong signal of where the market is headed.

"This is the first time that industry and the whole supply chain have come together to recognize that not all plastics are going to be recycled effectively and at scale," said Kate Bailey, policy and research director for Eco-Cycle Inc., a waste management and recycling company in Boulder, Colo., and a pact member. "I really think that's a huge shift in our thinking, that recycling is not going to be the answer for everything."

The pact, which includes more than 100 companies, governments and other groups, sees the list as moving away from plastic packaging that doesn't have a clear path to recycling viability, said Emily Tipaldo, executive director of the pact.

The phaseout list includes products like straws as well as problematic labels and expanded polystyrene.

"The elimination of these problematic and unnecessary materials will enable advancements in circular package design, increase opportunities for recovery and enhance the quality of recycled content available for manufacturers," she said.

Some plastics industry groups are pushing back strongly against the list, saying that while they support the pact's overall goal of more circular use of plastics, they see the list as a de facto ban on some plastic packaging.

They say it could result in switching to materials without the performance of plastics or that have a higher overall environmental footprint.

The American Chemistry Council criticized the pact's approach.

"The U.S. Plastics Pact lacked a transparent third-party, data-driven and scientific approach, and its process seems to be rooted in ideology and a predetermined, misguided outcome," said Joshua Baca, vice president of plastics at the group. "ACC has offered to partner with the pact to provide insight, expertise and data to no avail."

Besides PS, EPS and PVC, the phaseout list includes three commonly littered products — cutlery, stirrers and straws — as well as other packaging materials seen as contaminating recycling streams. They include oxo-degradable additives; rigid packaging made from glycol-modified PET; problematic labels; intentionally added fluorinated PFAS chemicals; and nondetectable pigments like carbon black and opaque or pigmented PET bottles, except for transparent blue or green.

The list of problematic materials is one of four broad goals the pact has set for itself. The others are, by 2025, to reach 50 percent of plastics packaging being recycled or composted; having 30 percent recycled content and having 100 percent of plastics packaging recyclable, reusable or compostable.

Within the plastics industry, the development of the list had been closely watched and in the runup to its release, the Plastics Industry Association in December called it an approach that won't work.

With the report out, the association in a Jan. 25 statement called the pact “well intentioned” but said it’s “problematic that the pact hopes to tell others how to run their businesses by restricting their choices.”

Smaller groups very directly impacted, like the EPS Industry Alliance, predicted economic and environmental harm and said companies would have trouble finding suitable alternatives to EPS in some applications.

The Vinyl Institute said putting “arbitrary restrictions on PVC packaging will not improve the recycling rate of other plastics because there is so little PVC in the curbside collection stream.”

But plastics industry reaction was hardly monolithic.

The Association of Plastic Recyclers, which sits on the pact's advisory council, agreed that getting rid of problematic materials will help recycling systems work better.

"There is a need for change in the system, and the pact list is a first step," said President and CEO Steve Alexander. "The reality is that there are no real surprises on the list. The industry knows what the problems are as we deal with them everyday."

He said the pact encouraged companies to use the APR design guidelines for recyclability.

The National Association for PET Container Resources, also a member of the pact, said the list would make PET recycling streams cleaner.

"Overall, we believe the impact to PET will be positive, in the sense that it will eliminate contamination in the bale," said Darrel Collier, the group's executive director.

The PET industry group didn't agree with everything on the list. Collier said they argued inside the pact against phasing out the colored and opaque PET bottles because they see "future opportunities" to recycle them with new technologies.

But he said he understands why the pact kept them on the phaseout list, since those new recycling technologies may not be ready by the pact's 2025 deadline.

"We understand this decision as there are limited recovery systems in place today, given the ambitious targets of the pact by 2025," Collier said.

Indeed, some of the plastics industry's concern with the list deals the 2025 timeline.

ACC's Baca said the pact is choosing to ban materials because its targets are too ambitious, and he pointed to an ACC goal for 30 percent recycled content in plastic packaging by 2030 as a more reasonable target.

"I think the process here is when you have ambitious goals without a way to get there, the first thing you do is say, 'Hey, why don't we essentially ban this stuff,'" Baca said. "That tells me they haven't done the hard work to get there."

But Tipaldo countered that the pact's member companies and organizations have done detailed work, spending more than 14 months developing their list of problematic materials using publicly available data. She said ACC was invited at the beginning to join the pact but declined.

The pact put a summary of its criteria and decision-making process online. Some plastics companies, including packaging maker Amcor Ltd. and resin firms Eastman Chemical Co. and Ineos Styrolution, are part of the pact.

Tipaldo said the contents of the list should not be a surprise because it includes some of the same items from Plastics Pacts in other countries, as well as items identified by other organizations like the Consumer Goods Forum, which released a plan in 2020 to improve PET bottle recycling by eliminating contaminants such as carbon black, PVC and EPS.

"Some of these things are on the list because they are challenges to the recycling stream all over the world," Tipaldo said.

She said the pact will develop a list of circular alternatives to replace the items on the list and will produce yearly reports on its progress.

The U.S. pact is part of a global network of a dozen similar national or regional pacts, all operated under the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and using EMF criteria for determining what constitutes as viable for recycling, reuse and composting. For recyclability, EMF wants a package to have a recycling rate of 30 percent, Tipaldo said.

The list can change over time as well, with the potential for items to be added or removed.

Tipaldo said the pact has a list of items that it's debating whether they should be added later. She did not identify any of them, but Eco-Cycle's Bailey pointed to a list published by the United Kingdom Plastics Pact that includes 19 products it is investigating for potential future lists. It includes plastic bags, film, nonrecyclable, multilayer pouches and single-use beverage bottles.

"We have only so much time and so many resources, and we need to prioritize the plastics that we know can be recycled effectively and at scale," Bailey said. "And we need to really direct the investments toward those goals."

A plastics industry representative who is on the pact's advisory council, Eastman Chemical executive Holli Alexander, said she hoped some materials could be removed from the list over time.

"There are significant investments being announced and being brought to life today that offer an expansion of what could be deemed recyclable in the near future," said Alexander, who chairs the pact's advisory council and is Eastman's strategic initiatives manager for global sustainability.

"We are hopeful that some items included on the list today may find a pathway to circularity, allowing them to be removed from the list in the future," she said.

She also noted that the pact did not include polypropylene on its phaseout list, which she attributed partly to industry efforts to improve its recycling performance.

"One great example of something that is not on the list is polypropylene," Alexander said. "Despite the fact that polypropylene has some challenges around claims of recyclability today, it's not on the list because there is a recognized pathway to get there through organized efforts in the Polypropylene [Recycling] Coalition."

EPA data shows low recycling rates for PP, however, with only 2.7 percent of all PP packaging and 8 percent of PP bottles recycled in 2018.

Some environmental groups have questioned the chances of making enough improvements in PP recycling to make it viable.

One longtime observer of industry voluntary commitments around recycling said the list "looks good as far as it goes" but urged the pact to add plastic films and flexible packaging.

Conrad MacKerron, senior vice president of shareholder advocacy firm As You Sow, said many companies in the pact are also members of the EMF's New Plastics Economy project, which already requires them to phase out nonrecyclable packaging by 2025, including plastic films.

He said companies need to take real steps to determine if it's feasible to have at-scale curbside recycling of problematic films and pouches by that date.

"This should be taken as a serious deadline with real consequences for failure, not just resigning from the commitment or saying, 'We'll try to do better,'" he said.

The call for the phaseout of PS and EPS packaging drew particular attention from plastics groups, which predicted economic and environmental harm.

Betsy Bowers, the executive director of the EPS Industry Alliance, said companies will find it impractical to phase out EPS packaging.

"If you were looking to replace all expanded polystyrene by 2025, the capacity is just not there in the paper industry," she said.

As well, she predicted that replacing EPS in protective packaging like shipping large-screen TVs would mean more broken products and delays.

"There's a lack of attention, let alone focus, on economic impacts, especially with the supply chain the way it is right now," she said.

A nationwide ban on EPS would "put the industry out of business," Bowers said.

Both Bowers and Baca also argued that EPS replacement materials would have higher environmental impacts.

"Polystyrene has an excellent carbon footprint," Baca said. "There have been significant advancements in technology that allow polystyrene to be recycled."

But pact officials pointed to long-running challenges building effective recycling systems for PS and EPS products to support their calls for a phaseout.

"The truth is we've been trying to recycle polystyrene for a long time, and it's just not going to get there," said Bailey. "Let's get serious and talk about individual materials and what their pathway is."

EPA data shows that only 3.6 percent of PS containers and packaging was recycled in 2018.

Tipaldo said some resins — and she included PS in this category — have had a hard time building enough consistent support to be widely recycled.

"People are saying, 'Why is this on the list, or this has a great recycling story,'" she said. "But for some of these materials, when you look at them, where's the support behind them to ensure their circular trajectory.

"And while I think some resins in particular have a really great story to tell from a technology side, they lacked support from the broader value chain," Tipaldo added.

While the pact's plans are entirely voluntary, ACC said it fears the targets could become law.

Baca said he was concerned legislators could take the pact's problematic materials list and write it into law, arguing that companies have already committed to them so they should be fine with them being mandated.

"When you put stuff out and say this is bad, it's very easy for lawmakers today to adopt that, particularly those who are deeply rooted in a sort of ideological view," Baca said. "I think it's irresponsible to think that you don't have a public policy impact based upon the recommendations."

The pact itself is not a lobbying organization, but some of its members said they would like to see the list of problematic materials included in laws.

Anja Malawi Brandon, U.S. plastics policy analyst at Ocean Conservancy, agreed that the industry commitment makes it easier for legislators to try to write it into law. Ocean Conservancy is a pact member.

"There's already so much buy-in from major industry players, so that's one less hurdle that policymakers need to overcome," said Brandon, who previously worked for Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., sponsor of the Break Free From Plastics Pollution Act. "I think that this is an interesting opportunity that policymakers will look to."