Amcor joins U.S. Plastics Pact to advance circular economy goals in the United States
By Amcor Rigid Packaging
GeneralThe initiative will unify approaches to rethink the way plastics are designed, used, and reused
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND (AUGUST 26, 2020) – Amcor announced today it has joined the U.S. Plastics Pact, a collaborative, solutions-driven initiative to create a path forward to a circular economy for plastics in the United States by 2025. The U.S. Plastics Pact is focused on four ambitious goals intended to drive significant systems change by unifying diverse cross-sector approaches, setting a national strategy, and creating scalable solutions. The first North American Pact of its kind, the U.S. Plastics Pact is a collaboration led by The Recycling Partnership, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
The U.S. pact convenes more than more than 60 brands, retailers, NGOs, and government agencies across the plastics value chain to bring one voice to U.S. packaging through coordinated initiatives and innovative solutions for rethinking products, packaging, and business models.
“As a global leader in the packaging industry, Amcor’s colleagues continuously push themselves and others to achieve more, to understand challenges and advance transformational change,” said Eric Roegner, President of Amcor Rigid Packaging. “We are already working with customers to increase recycled materials in packaging and increase recycling rates worldwide. The goals of the U.S. Plastics Pact are closely aligned with Amcor’s own sustainability agenda and we can leverage our in-depth industry expertise and resources at scale to advance the transition to a circular economy.”
As a founding member of the U.S. Plastics Pact, Amcor has agreed to collectively deliver against four ambitious goals by 2025:
- Define a list of packaging to be designated as problematic or unnecessary by 2021 and take measures to eliminate them by 2025.
- All plastic packaging to be 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable.
- Undertake ambitious actions to effectively recycle or compost 50% of plastic packaging.
- The average recycled content or responsibly sourced bio-based content in plastic packaging to be 30%.
While the U.S. pact is complementary to, and follows the ambitious precedents set by the existing global network of plastic pacts, it will be tailored to meet the unique needs and challenges of the U.S. market.
“The U.S. Plastics Pact will inspire and support upstream innovation through a coordinated national strategy, creating a unified framework and enabling members to accelerate progress toward our ambitious 2025 sustainability goals,” says Sarah Dearman, Vice President of Circular Ventures for The Recycling Partnership.
Amcor believes there will always be a role for responsible packaging that offers differentiated functionality while minimizing waste in the environment. A responsible packaging system will require innovative packaging design, improvements to waste management infrastructure and increased consumer participation.
Amcor is making progress towards its commitment to develop all its packaging to be recyclable or reusable by 2025, significantly increase use of recycled materials, and drive greater recycling of packaging around the world.
About Amcor
Amcor is a global leader in developing and producing responsible packaging for food, beverage, pharmaceutical, medical, home- and personal-care, and other products. Amcor works with leading companies around the world to protect their products and the people who rely on them, differentiate brands, and improve value chains through a range of flexible and rigid packaging, specialty cartons, closures, and services. The company is focused on making packaging that is increasingly light-weighted, recyclable and reusable, and made using a growing amount of recycled content. Around 47,000 Amcor people generate US$12.5 billion in sales from operations that span about 230 locations in 40-plus countries. NYSE: AMCR; ASX: AMC
About the Recycling Partnership
The Recycling Partnership is a national nonprofit organization that leverages corporate partner funding to transform recycling for good in states, cities, and communities nationwide. As the leading organization in the country that engages the full recycling supply chain from the corporations that manufacture products and packaging to local governments charged with recycling to industry end markets, haulers, material recovery facilities, and converters, The Recycling Partnership positively impacts recycling at every step in the process. Since 2014, the nonprofit change agent diverted 230 million pounds of new recyclables from landfills, saved 465 million gallons of water, avoided more than 250,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases, and drove significant reductions in targeted contamination rates. Learn more at www.recyclingpartnership.org.
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