Analysis Shows Poor Progress Reducing Plastic Use And The Need To Focus On Reuse

A blog post, THE FIGHT AGAINST PLASTIC WASTE ISN'T GOING WELL. TIME TO FOCUS ON REUSE, cites research and analysis from Business360 and shows why plastic use is rising even as consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies work to comply with global commitments to manage plastic packaging.

We worked with Business360 to update the analysis and use the latest plastic use data, which runs to 2022. This shows how overall plastic use across brand and retail signatory companies in 2022 is up 7.1% on 2018. Virgin plastic usage went back up to 2018 levels and total usage was 2.6% up on 2021 levels.

Business360 points out that plastic use continues to rise because:

1.       The commitments hold no reductions or even limits on plastic use

2.       The primary target of making 100% of plastic packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025 allows companies to focus on ‘recyclability’ which is minimally effective

This chart shows how companies have focused on recyclability to comply with the global commitments:

That chart shows that against the objective of ensuring that ‘100% of plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable’, companies are making incremental progress and over 99% of it is in making packaging ‘recyclable’.

The share of packaging that is compostable remains at zero and just 1.2% of packaging is reusable and that has declined in recent years.

As the post says, Brands stamp ‘recyclable’ in bold on their packaging and consumers take comfort from it, but companies know it’ll make no difference.

And concludes that reuse is the way to go:  we need targets and corporate commitments for a meaningful and rising share of their products by volume sold through reuse solutions.

We couldn’t agree more!