Amcor Sees U.S. Plastics Pact Roadmap Launch as Opportunity to Drive Circular Economy Progress

Engaging nearly 100 organizations, the Roadmap outlines actions and responsibilities to achieve reusable, recyclable or compostable plastic packaging by 2025

Amcor announced its support for the launch of the U.S. Plastics Pact’s Roadmap to 2025, an aggressive national strategy for how the U.S. Pact, Amcor and other signatory organizations – known as Activators – will achieve four 2025 targets. Launched today, the plan delineates specific actions, responsibilities and timeframes necessary to realize a circular economy for plastics in the United States.

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Launched in August 2020, the U.S. Plastics Pact is a consortium led by The Recycling Partnership and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) as part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s global network. The network creates a holistic ecosystem of industry stakeholders with a common strategy: to address plastic waste at its source.

“Amcor is committed to creating responsible packaging that is recycled and reused,” said Amcor VP of Sustainability David Clark. “Our innovation is designing more and more of our packaging to be recycled and using more recycled content, but we need progress on infrastructure and consumer participation too. That is why we are proud to support the rollout of the U.S. Plastics Pact Roadmap – which shows how cooperation across the value chain can help us solve the problem of waste in the environment.”

As a U.S. Pact Activator, Amcor joins others in the plastics value chain to drive progress through systemic change toward the 2025 targets:

1. Define a list of packaging to be designated as problematic or unnecessary by 2021 and take measures to eliminate them by 2025.
2. 100% of plastic packaging will be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025.
3. By 2025, undertake ambitious actions to effectively recycle or compost 50% of plastic packaging.
4. By 2025, the average recycled content or responsibly sourced bio-based content in plastic packaging will be 30%.

The U.S. Pact Roadmap is designed to advance these goals and measure progress through annual reporting.

“The current state of U.S. infrastructure coupled with a lack of incentives to utilize recycled content in plastic packaging have put immense strain on the value chain,” said U.S. Plastics Pact Executive Director Emily Tipaldo. “The Roadmap is designed to help U.S. industry leaders act on the significant, systemwide change needed to realize a circular economy for plastics by 2025. The timeframe is short, and the workload is immense, but if we choose to do nothing, the visions of a circular economy across the U.S. will give way to the status quo. We look forward to working with all our Activators to drive this critical change.”

To read the U.S. Pact’s full Roadmap, please visit us: https://usplasticspact.org/Roadmap/

Read the 2020 Amcor Sustainability Report: https://www.amcor.com/sustainability-report

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 supply 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 an increasing 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

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About The Recycling Partnership

The Recycling Partnership is the action agent transforming the U.S. residential recycling system for good. Our team operates at every level of the recycling value chain and works on the ground with thousands of communities to transform underperforming recycling programs and tackle circular economy challenges. As the leading organization in the country that engages the full recycling supply chain, from working with companies to make their packaging more circular and help them meet climate and sustainability goals, to working with government to develop policy solutions to address the systemic needs of the U.S. recycling system, The Recycling Partnership positively impacts recycling at every step in the process. Since 2014, the nonprofit change agent diverted 375 million pounds of new recyclables from landfills, saved 968 million gallons of water, avoided more than 420,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases, and drove significant reductions in targeted contamination rates. Learn more at recyclingpartnership.org

About World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

WWF is one of the world’s leading conservation organizations, working in nearly 100 countries for over half a century to help people and nature thrive. With the support of more than 5 million members worldwide, WWF is dedicated to delivering science-based solutions to preserve the diversity and abundance of life on Earth, halt the degradation of the environment and combat the climate crisis. Visit www.worldwildlife.org learn more and keep up with the latest sustainability news by following @WWFBetterBiz on Twitter and signing up for our newsletter and news alerts here.

About the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s global Plastics Pact Network

Since 2016, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative has rallied businesses and governments behind a positive vision of a circular economy for plastic. Its 2016 and 2017 New Plastics Economy reports captured worldwide headlines, revealing the financial and environmental costs of waste plastic and pollution.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Plastics Pact Network is a globally aligned response to plastic waste and pollution, which enables vital knowledge sharing and coordinated action. It is a network of national and regional (multi-country) initiatives which brings together key stakeholders to implement solutions towards a circular economy for plastic, tailored to each geography. Each initiative is led by a local organisation and unites businesses, government institutions, NGOs and citizens behind a common vision, with an ambitious set of local targets.

Further information: emf.org/plastics-pact | @circulareconomy

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