2019 annual progress report of the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment
The New Plastics Economy Global Commitment (NPEGC) was launched at the Our Oceans Conference in Bali (Indonesia) on 29th October 2018. Led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in collaboration with UNEP, the Global Commitment brings together and aligns the efforts of businesses, governments, and other organisations behind a common vision and targets to address plastic waste and pollution at its source. The Global Commitment aims to act as a lighthouse, enabling frontrunning businesses and governments to inspire others and lead by example. UNEP leads the engagement of governments under this Initiative.As of October 2019, over 400 institutions have signed the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, including 19 governments from around the world, and more than 200 businesses of the plastic packaging value chain (jointly representing over 20% of all plastic packaging used globally). The 2019 Progress report of NPEGC released in October 2019 provides an unprecedented level of transparency on how almost 200 businesses and governments are reshaping the plastics system. For governments, the Commitment translates into having ambitious policies and reporting tangible progress by 2025, in key areas such as: elimination of problematic or unnecessary plastic packaging and/or products; encouraging reuse models; encouraging use of reusable, recyclable, or compostable plastic; increasing collection, sorting, reuse, and recycling rates; stimulating the demand for recycled plastics. For businesses, the actions sought depend on their position in the value chain, and include taking ambitious actions on areas such as the promotion of reuse models; incorporation of recycled plastic in their products, and investing in businesses, technologies or other assets that work towards the vision of a circular economy for plastic.
At the heart of the New Plastics Economy is a vision of a circular economy for plastic in which it never becomes waste. The vision has six key points: 1.Elimination of problematic or unnecessary plastic packaging through redesign, innovation, and new delivery models is a priority 2.Reuse models are applied where relevant, reducing the need for single-use packaging 3.All plastic packaging is 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable 4. All plastic packaging is reused, recycled, or composted in practice 5.The use of plastic is fully decoupled from the consumption of finite resources 6.All plastic packaging is free of hazardous chemicals, and the health, safety, and rights of all people involved are respected. For details on the vision, please see: https://www.newplasticseconomy.org/assets/doc/npec-vision.pdf; https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/assets/downloads/13319-Global-Commitment-Definitions.pdf After 1 year on from the Global Commitment's launch, the 2019 annual progress report of the Global Commitment was released in October 2019 during the Our Ocean Conference in Oslo, Norway. It is the first in a series of annual reports in which we aim to assess progress across the signatory group as a whole, highlight leading examples that can serve as inspiration for others, and disclose the progress of individual companies and governments towards a circular economy for plastics. The 2019 report shows promising progress on two fronts. First, many business and government signatories are laying the foundations to scale and accelerate action and have made initial progress against their targets — ranging from concrete plans to eliminate problematic packaging items, to 43 businesses reporting active reuse pilots, changes in packaging design to increase recyclability and initial progress towards ambitious recycled content targets. Second, the report establishes, for the first time, a quantitative baseline that can be used to measure such progress across a significant group of businesses over the period to 2025. These are important steps forward. To reach the 2025 targets, continued scaling of action and a further increase in the ambition level will be needed. In particular, this applies to efforts going beyond recycling, such as elimination and reuse. This will need to happen in the short term, as major investments, innovations, and transformation programmes must start now in order to have an impact by 2025. To make the vision of a circular economy for plastic a reality, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and UNEP call on all businesses that make or use plastics, and all governments across the world, to sign up to the Global Commitment and join the effort to create a circular economy for plastic. For more information, see the 2019 progress report: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/assets/downloads/Global-Commitment-2019-Progress-Report.pdf
