Post by account_disabled on Feb 20, 2024 1:20:40 GMT -5
In recent years, plastic has positioned itself as one of the biggest enemies of the planet and its inhabitants. The reason? Simple… According to the 2017 Ocean Conference , plastic has caused the death of up to a million birds and nearly 100,000 marine mammals of 600 species. Can you imagine how much this number has grown in three years? But that's not all, due to the poor management that has occurred with said material, most of it ends up in the sea and consequently in the stomachs of thousands of fish, and it is likely that you are consuming close to 11 thousand pieces of plastic per year! This damage to our health and the world motivated large and small companies to rethink the way they protect their items so that they reach our hands safely. And as a result, bulk stores began to emerge, packaging made from recycled materials, packaging designed to become something else once its first function had been fulfilled, among other alternatives to plastic. Despite this huge push to replace this material and the series of pilot projects for refillable products, it is estimated that only 2% of the products sold by the world's largest consumer goods companies this year arrived in reusable packaging. What is missing? The Ellen Macarthur Foundation 's annual report on the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment notes that by 2025, more than 250 companies have committed to: Eliminate all problematic or unnecessary single-use plastic packaging.
Ensure that all plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable. Ensure that 50% of plastic packaging is recycled or composted effectively. Achieve 30% recycled or responsibly sourced organic content in packaging. On the second objective, the report reveals that the Pledge signatories collectively classify almost two-thirds (65%) of their plastic packaging portfolios as recyclable. However, progress has been much slower in the reuse space and it was highlighted that while 56% of trade members are running a reuse pilot or plan to do so within 12 months, the proportion Europe Cell Phone Number List of reusable packaging in the cohort stood at only 1.9%. This amounts to just a 0.1% increase on 2018 levels. This is despite the fact that many brands that have adopted the pledge are participating in TerraCycle's Loop platform, a retail offering that delivers rechargeable products directly to consumers' homes. They include Unilever, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola Company. Elimination efforts remain focused on a relatively small set of materials and formats, and are primarily delivered through substitution with other plastics or paper, or lightweighting, rather than completely reducing the need for single-use packaging.
Report On the first commitment: eliminate all problematic or unnecessary single-use plastic packaging, the report reveals that only 17% of problematic or unnecessary single-use items produced by signatories have been successfully eliminated. This is a 25% year-on-year increase, but it is not fast enough. An advance or setback? The Ellen MacArthur Foundation's lead for the New Plastics Economy project , Sander Defruyt, called on companies to take important steps to rethink what packaging they put on the market in the first place. We call on the industry to rapidly scale up efforts to reduce single-use packaging and eliminate packaging types that have no credible path to making recycling work in practice and at scale. Report. He also shared that the industry cannot make the change alone, and called on policymakers to establish enabling conditions, incentives and the international framework to accelerate this transition. Furthermore, the report notes that consumer goods and retail brands have achieved an average of 6.2% recycled content in plastic packaging. This proportion is 22% higher than in 2018 but, again, nowhere near the 30% requirement for .