The New Plastics Economy Global Commitment 2019 progress report

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Launched in October 2018 by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in collaboration with the UN Environment Programme, the Global Commitment unites businesses, governments, and other organizations from around the world behind a common vision of a circular economy for plastics, in which plastics never become waste. The signatory group now exceeds 400 organizations, who are working to: eliminate the plastic items we don’t need; innovate so all plastics we do need are designed to be safely reused, recycled, or composted; and circulate everything we use to keep it in the economy and out of the environment. All business and government signatories have set concrete, public 2025 targets towards this vision, and we applaud them for their leadership. This is the first in a series of annual reports aimed 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 UN Environment Programme 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. The question is not whether a world without plastic pollution is possible, but what we will do together to make it happen.