UNPACKING THE ELLEN MACARTHUR FOUNDATION’S UNIVERSAL CIRCULAR ECONOMY POLICY GOALS
In January this year, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation published a set of Universal Circular Economy Policy Goals, with the aim of creating a common direction of travel in policy development for a faster transition to a circular economy. To find out what the goals mean for the packaging industry, we spoke with Carsten Wachholz, senior policy manager. PE: Before we get into the guidelines themselves, I’d like to put them into context. How would you assess the current state of the circular economy in the packaging industry as it stands?
CW: A good starting point is that many sectors still think of the circular economy in terms of better recycling and waste management. That’s part of it, but it’s a bigger idea. The circular economy tackles the root causes of global challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. It’s also about redesigning the entire system – not just particular products or materials. One of the key insights from our work is that rethinking packaging alone is not enough – the systems the packaging items are used in are also key. You often need to rethink the product and its delivery system to eliminate the need for packaging altogether. So therefore, to talk about the state of the circular economy in the packaging industry may simply be too limited in terms of framing the challenge.
Because, in doing so, we can focus too much on substituting one packaging material with another, with the view of maybe increasing recycling. Nevertheless, when we look at plastics packaging, for instance, this narrow angle has definitely led to an increased effort to phase out some of the most problematic categories, such as polystyrene, PVC and undetectable carbon black. We also see significant progress being made by businesses to incorporate recycled content in some types of plastic packaging. When we look at the bigger picture, it’s about the challenge to implement design changes; increasing the recyclability of plastic packaging overall and shifting to more reusable packaging. Here, we have seen limited progress up to now. And that’s why we favour a comprehensive circular economy approach, as promoted through our Universal Circular Economy Policy Goals, that looks at both the product and the underlying business model to either eliminate, innovate or circulate packaging for a specific purpose. Packaging Europe | 17 |
