Two hundred fifty companies, representing 20 percent of worldwide production of plastic packaging, pledged to eradicate plastic waste by 2025 by signing the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in collaboration with the United Nations Environment unit.
Signatories to the pledge include Danone, H&M, L'Oreal, PepsiCo, and The Coca-Cola Company. Big plastic producers like Amcor, Novamont, and resource management specialist Veolia also committed to the pledge.
Participation to the initiative is not limited to big brands in the retail and manufacture sectors as more than fifteen financial institutions, particularly those with more than $2.5 million in assets under management, have also pledged their support for the Global Commitment. Five venture capital funds have also pledged more than $200 million to support the initiative.
Among other endorsers are large organizations in the likes of the World Wide Fund for Nature, the World Economic Forum, The Consumer Goods Forum which is a conglomeration of about 400 retailers and manufacturers from 70 countries, and 40 universities, institutions, and academics.
As part of their pledge, these companies and entities vowed to "Eliminate" single-use packaging and shift to reusable packaging; "Innovate" to ensure that plastic packaging is replaced with reusable, recyclable, and compostable type by 2025; and "Circulate" all the reusable plastic materials into recycled packaging or products.
The New Plastics Economy Global Commitment was designed based on findings that more than 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced since the early 1950s. More than 99 percent of these plastics are produced using chemicals from oil, natural gas, and goal which are non-renewable. Sixty percent of these plastics end up in the landfill or the natural environment. If this rate continues for the next decades or so, there could be more plastic than fishes in the ocean by 2050.
Meanwhile, SC Johnson announced a similar initiative, partnering with Plastic Bank which is one of the leading organizations working to reduce the global crisis of ocean plastic. The company's initiative would be entirely focused on communities across Indonesia.
Aside from the partnership, SC Johnson, as a whole, also pledged to improve 100 percent recyclable, reusable, and compostable packaging by 2025 from its current 90 percent.
In its announcement, SC Johnson highlighted a 2015 report by Ocean Conservancy and the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment which found that China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand were responsible for more than 55 percent of the plastic waste around the world that seeped into the ocean. Reducing the leakage from these five countries alone could reduce plastic waste by about 23 percent, the research found.
