U.S. Plastics Pact to miss all 2025 commitments

On December 17, 2024, the U.S. Plastics Pact published its annual impact report, providing a summary of the progress and challenges during the past year in its efforts to address plastic pollution. The U.S. Plastics Pact, an initiative founded by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in collaboration with stakeholders from industry, civil society, and academia, aims to promote a more sustainable economy for plastics in the United States (FPF reported). As of November 30, 2024, the group comprises 130 members, including brands and retailers, trade associations, recyclers, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and academic institutions. 

In 2020, the consortium had established four primary targets to achieve by 2025:  

1. eliminating unnecessary or problematic plastic packaging 
2. making all plastic packaging placed on the market by pact members is either reusable, recyclable, or compostable  
3. ensuring that 50% of plastic packaging is recycled or composted, and  
4. reaching an average of 30% recycled content or responsibly sourced biobased content in plastic packaging. 

The report lays out the progress made on each of these targets during 2024 as follows 

1.  22% of the pact members reported that they did not sell any items from the list of unnecessary or problematic materials. 
2. 50% of the plastic packaging by weight introduced into the market by pact members was classified as reusable, recyclable, or compostable.  
3. The national U.S. recycling rate sits at 13.3% which makes the recycling rates for plastic packaging the most significant gap  
4. Pact members reported that the average post-consumer recycled content or responsibly sourced biobased content used in their plastic packaging is currently 11%. 

Already in its 2022 progress report, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation highlighted these difficulties, saying that many of the commitments were unlikely to meet the 2025 targets (FPF reported and here). Recognizing these obstacles, the U.S. Plastics Pact has now begun transitioning to its updated “Roadmap 2.0,” which extends the existing targets until 2030 and introduces a fifth target to “identify viable reusable packaging systems and increase their implementation and scale by 2030, as part of reducing the use of virgin plastics.” 

Reference 

U.S. Plastics Pact (December 17, 2024) “U.S. Pact 2023-24 Impact Report.” 

Read more 

U.S. Plastics Pact (January 25, 2022) “U.S. Plastics Pact Brings Together Leading Brands and Materials Manufacturers to Seek Solutions to “Problematic and Unnecessary” Materials.” 

Katie Pyzyk (December 20, 2024) “US Plastics Pact charts incremental progress, signals new opportunities.”