GLOBAL COMMITMENT REPORT 2021: HAVE WE REACHED THE VIRGIN PLASTICS PEAK? The Ellen MacArthur Foundation and UN Environment Programme’s 2021 Global Commitment Progress Report shows that after decades of growth, virgin plastic use appears to have peaked for Global Commitment brands and retailers, and is set to fall by almost 20% by 2025. Elisabeth Skoda takes a closer look at the report with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy Programme Manager Lily Shepherd.
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lobal Commitment brands and retailers have collectively reduced their consumption of virgin plastic in packaging for the second year running, according to new data. Progress is largely driven by recycling. “We’ve seen a fairly small, but absolute reduction in each of the last two years in terms of use of virgin plastics in packaging. That follows decades of exponential growth in the consumption of virgin plastics by the industry, so feels significant. This year, we’ve introduced reduction targets as a new mandatory requirement to be a brand or a retail signatory of the Global Commitment. We’re expecting those to drive a total decrease of almost 20% between 2018, when we started, and 2025, when our targets run to,” explained Lily Shepherd. A strong driver for this reduction in virgin materials is a growth in the area of recycled content. “We’ve seen about 30% growth for the second year in a row with our signatories, so we’ve gone from about 5% across the group weighted average in 2018 to just over 8% in 2020; again, a very positive development.” When combined with the impact of existing commitments, it is estimated that raising ambitions to this level will avoid eight million tonnes of virgin plastic from being produced each year by 2025. That is equivalent to keeping 40 million barrels of oil in the ground.
More action is needed While this virgin plastic reduction is a welcome trend, current and planned progress is driven largely by switching from virgin plastic to recycled plastic. This is just one part of the solution, but does not address the total amount of plastic packaging on the market. There is little evidence of ambitious efforts
to reduce the need for single-use packaging in the first place. Less than 2% of signatories’ plastic packaging is reusable, and for more than half of all signatories, this is 0%. Big changes are needed to address this problem, as Shepherd points out. “We know that we can’t recycle our way out of plastic pollution. Future scenarios involving recycling and disposal alone have been shown to result in higher annual leakage and higher greenhouse gas emissions. To really tackle plastic pollution and to achieve a circular economy for plastics, we are going to need to reduce the total amount of material that is moving through the system. Our signatories and the rest of the industry need to look beyond simply substituting one plastic for another, or perhaps substituting plastics with paper. They need to look at how we can fundamentally redesign the packaging or the product, or the business model to design out the need for single-use packaging altogether.” This challenge can also be an opportunity for companies, as Dame Ellen MacArthur, Founder & Chair of Trustees at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, points out. “[Upstream innovation] doesn’t just allow us to design out waste, it also means we can design out carbon emissions whilst creating new opportunities for business. Shifting just 20% of plastic packaging from single-use to reuse is an opportunity estimated to be worth USD 10 billion.”
The reuse challenge Drilling deeper into the report, Shepherd observes some progress in the area of reuse when it comes to the number of reuse model pilots reported by signatories. Packaging Europe | 13 |
