Plastics: driving systemic transformation

Problem

Plastic can play a vital role in packaging the products we buy — from protecting goods during transportation, to contributing to extending the shelf-life of food. However, the same properties that make plastic versatile like its strength, light weight, and durability, also cause significant problems when it accumulates in the environment. The devastating impacts of plastic pollution on natural environments have been laid bare, and global concern is high.

Solution

For almost 20 years, WRAP has been working on solutions to the harm caused by problematic plastic packaging, long before the extent of plastic’s environmental impact was widely seen. Our focus has remained stead-fast in that time.

We work to transform plastic packaging systems by reducing or eliminating unnecessary or problematic plastic, ensuring necessary plastic is designed to be reused, recycled or composted, and then recycling it, ideally back into packaging.

Our work towards Circular Living begins in the UK

Our pioneering work towards Circular Living for plastic began in the UK in 2004.

Working with businesses like Coca-Cola, Boots, and Marks & Spencer, we proved that recycled PET plastic could be safely used alongside virgin PET plastic in drink bottles. It created a market for recycled plastic, and made recycling more of it more economically viable.

In 2005, we tackled plastic milk bottles, a household staple, by closing the loop on milk bottle recycling and scaling solutions across major retailers like ASDA and Waitrose. By convening industry and focusing on specific product categories, we have reduced unnecessary packaging, achieving a 25% reduction in yoghurt and easter egg packaging between 2009 and 2016.

WRAP’s ongoing work with manufacturers, brands, and retailers is reinforced by strong partnerships with governments and citizen engagement. Our collaboration with policymakers is crucial to help shape and inform legislation, like introducing bans on plastic items, plastic packaging tax and extended producer responsibility (EPR) initiatives.

Our Recycle Now campaign engages citizens directly to provide people with the right knowledge and motivation to recycle.  We use citizen science and proven behaviour change models to systematically improve the quality and quantity of recycling. Strategic engagement with the whole industry has been central to success. The Recycle Now campaign has been adopted nation-wide including across most local authorities and businesses through on pack labelling.

An international network of Plastics Pacts is born

In 2018, we expanded our commitment to wide-scale change by launching The UK Plastics Pact with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. This pioneering initiative brought together governments, businesses, NGOs, and academics to tackle plastic pollution with a shared vision and actionable targets.

We’ve since taken the model global with a network of Plastics Pacts across 22 countries, all convening industry and making demonstrable progress on the issue of plastic waste through  circular economy principles.

Impact

We have made significant progress in addressing unsustainable ‘take-make-dispose’ models in plastics. With the support of our partners we are developing solutions that promote a circular way of living, focusing on everyday challenges to drive systemic transformation for people and the planet.

Around the world:

• Over 360,000 tonnes of problematic plastics have been eliminated globally through Plastics Pacts, keeping billions of items out of landfills and the environment 
• More than 850,000 tonnes of plastic packaging has been redesigned to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable
• Recycled content in plastics has increased by 44%, avoiding the production of 2.2 million tonnes of virgin plastic.

In the UK:

• Between 2018 and 2022, the sale and distribution of problematic single-use plastics like cutlery, straws, and polystyrene packaging dropped by 99.6%, removing 730 million items from circulation
• 90% of people regularly recycle most items that can be
• PET and milk bottles now have an average recycled content of 42.6% and 40% respectively, with levels of plastic bottle recycling radically rising from 5% in 2002 to over 75% today.

A lot remains to be done, and WRAP’s work continues. We are collaborating with research organisations like UKRI to tackle pressing plastic challenges through academic expertise, supporting innovative recycling technologies, and consulting with governments to develop effective future legislation for people, the planet, and nature.

Deep dive: Milk bottles

The average person in the UK consumes 70 litres of milk a year. So when it comes to packaging milk, what we choose really matters.

Our goal? To integrate circularity across the production of plastic milk bottles through a design-make-reuse approach, so that old milk bottles (post-consumer HDPE) could be turned into new ones (food-grade rHDPE).

WRAP then convened trade associations, dairies, recyclers, and bottle producers on a demonstration project to develop an industrial scale process for sorting and recycling old milk bottles into new milk bottles.

The first step: We had to prove this could be done safely. Up to 30,000 individual milk bottles were analysed and a recycling process that could produce high quality reused material safe for human consumption was developed - a world first. This gave us proof that sustainable processes could work at scale.

The evidence we supplied helped to bridge data gaps for European legislation and industry standards in this area and set a path towards a circular economy for plastic milk bottles.

But this was just the start. We later worked directly with producers to redesign the milk bottles they supply to guarantee that they can be recycled again and again. Attention to detail was key, including  the colour of bottle caps having an important impact. The colour of caps was therefore changed to reduce (and since remove) pigment to avoid discolouration of the recycled material.  

Impact:

• Providing evidence to support EU legislation change to establish a more circular approach to plastic milk packaging
• Most people in the UK now commonly recycle milk bottles, with the recycling rate being around 80% 
• Today HDPE milk bottles contain up to 40% rHDPE.

Deep dive: The Plastics Pact

Our Circular Living ambitions call for system-level transformation. Whilst our efforts in piloting projects across industry and scaling change to individual items have proved successful, for truly impactful change, we need to work holistically across the entire plastics system.

WRAP joined forces with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to develop the UK Plastics Pact, a pilot for an entirely new sustainability model for plastics — one that would bring together industry leaders across governments, businesses, NGOs and academics to affect change. WRAP was able to use its unique position sitting at the intersection of government, business and citizens to bring all of these different groups together in a collective effort towards fighting problem plastics.

Members are required to report progress against four interlinked targets: 

• Eliminate problematic or unnecessary plastic packaging items
• 100% of plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable
• 70% plastic packaging effectively recycled or composted
• 30% average recycled content.

WRAP convenes industry to collaborate to overcome the challenges, while providing support, tools and direction to The Pact membership.  

Impacts

• Since launching in 2018, the UK Plastics Pact has grown to over 200 signatories ranging from manufacturers to food brands and retailers
• There has been an 8% reduction in the total plastic packaging being used in the UK with more than 280 billion items no longer in circulation with an associated reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of 10.5%
• Infrastructure has been created enabling better quality and higher levels of recycling within the UK
• The membership base has tripled the use of recycled content in products, whilst almost entirely designing-out hard-to-recycle plastics like black plastic trays, once prevalent in ready meal aisles.

Crucially, the UK Plastics Pact has provided a scalable model to catalyse a coordinated approach world-wide. There are now 12 Pacts tackling plastic pollution covering 18 countries and regions across six continents engaging over 900 local and global organisations.