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Canada Plastics Pact announces industry-wide action plan to address plastic waste

Ottawa – More than 70 leading businesses, organizations, and governments have come together to release an ambitious action plan to eliminate plastic waste through the Canada Plastics Pact.

“Roadmap to 2025: A shared action plan to build a circular economy for plastics packaging” represents unprecedented cross-value chain collaboration, uniting key players behind a shared vision for a circular economy for plastics packaging in Canada and a targeted plan to drive tangible change by 2025.

The Roadmap was developed through the engagement of leading industry, NGO, and public sector organizations, including brands, retailers, recyclers, resin producers, nonprofits, associations, governments and others who together account for over a third of the plastics packaging on the market in Canada. These leading organizations are collaborating to realize a circular economy for plastics where we eliminate the plastics we don’t need, and innovate so the plastics we do need can be reused, recycled or composted to be kept in the economy and out of the environment.

The Roadmap presents a full picture of what is needed to aggressively advance action and what can be done next to achieve a circular economy for plastics packaging through three strategic priorities for 2025:

• Reduce, reuse, collect: Eliminate unnecessary and hard to recycle plastics. Drive innovation for reuse and refill models. Innovate to prevent waste from being created in the first place. Improve collection and recycling systems.
• Optimize the recycling system:Packaging design standards to improve recyclability. Investments in new infrastructure. Address supply and demand issues to incorporate recycled resins. Ensure government policy is in place and well-designed.
• Use data to improve the whole system: Create standard definitions and measurement practices. Drive investment in better real-time data and monitoring.

Currently, we are throwing valuable materials away and there is significant material loss between the plastics that are generated to that which is collected, sorted and actually recycled, according to a news release. Innovation in technology and business models that will be generated through achieving a circular economy for plastics packaging will capture economic value, deliver jobs, and position Canadian businesses competitively.

The CPP is following the precedents set in the Roadmaps of other Pacts across the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s global Plastics Pact Network to bring globally aligned direction and responses to plastic waste and pollution. The Roadmap will accelerate progress towards the CPP’s four 2025 targets for plastics packaging and waste which Partners of the CPP are required to report on annually. These are:

1. Define a list of plastic packaging to be designated as problematic or unnecessary and take measures to eliminate them.
2. 100 per cent of plastic packaging being designed to be reusable, recyclable or compostable.
3. 50 per cent of plastic packaging is effectively recycled or composted.
4. 30 per cent recycled content across all plastic packaging.

To read the Canada Plastics Pact’s Roadmap, please visit roadmap.plasticspact.ca.