Canada Plastics Pact aims to tackle plastics pollution with innovative solutions

Canada's relationship to plastic waste has fundamentally changed: the Canada Plastics Pact ( CPP ) has launched to end plastic waste and pollution. The pact brings together key players to collectively work towards ambitious 2025 goals that they could never achieve on their own.

More than 40 partners have joined the Canada Plastics Pact, representing diverse parts of the plastics value chain, from leading brands to waste management companies, government institutions, and NGOs. Because plastic packaging accounts for 47 percent of all plastic waste, it is the immediate focus of the CPP's collective efforts.

An ambitious pre-competitive, multi-stakeholder platform, the CPP will enable companies across the Canadian plastics value chain to collaborate and innovate. It will build on significant work that has already been underway to reduce plastics waste, and will grow over time. Together, partners will rethink the way they design, use, and reuse plastics, thereby charting a path toward a circular economy for plastic by 2025.

With an eye for bold systemic change, the CPP will work to eliminate the plastics we don't need, innovate to ensure that the plastics we do need are reusable, recyclable, or compostable, and circulate the plastic we use, keeping it in the economy and out of the environment.

The CPP is working towards four clear, actionable targets by 2025:

• Define a list of plastic packaging that is to be designated as problematic or unnecessary and take measures to eliminate them
• Support efforts towards 100 percent of plastic packaging being designed to be reusable, recyclable or compostable
• Undertake ambitious actions to ensure that at least 50 percent of plastic packaging is effectively recycled or composted
• Ensure an average of at least 30 percent recycled content across all plastic packaging (by weight)

The founding partners of the CPP are:

Canadian Beverage Association, Canadian Produce Marketing Association, Canadian Stewardship Services Alliance Inc., Canadian Tire Corporation, Circular Innovation Council, Circular Plastics Taskforce, Cleanfarms Inc., Club Coffee, Coca-Cola Canada, Council of the Great Lakes Region, Danone Canada, David Suzuki Foundation, EFS-plastics Inc., Emterra Group, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada, General Mills Canada, Ice River Sustainable Solutions, International Institute for Sustainable Development, Keurig Dr Pepper Canada, Kraft Heinz Canada, Loblaw Companies Limited, Maple Leaf Foods Inc., Mars Canada, Merlin Plastics, Metro Vancouver, Mondelez Canada Inc., National Zero Waste Council, The Natural Step Canada, Nestlé Canada, Ocean Wise, PAC Packaging Consortium, Pyrowave, The Recycling Council of Alberta, Retail Council of Canada, Return-It, Ryse Solutions, Save-On-Foods, Smart Prosperity Institute, Unilever Canada, Walmart Canada. 

"Joining together through the CPP is a diverse group of leaders from across Canada's plastics value chain," says David Hughes, CEO, The Natural Step Canada, the host organization of the CPP. "While I am impressed by their genuine commitment to achieving a zero plastic waste economy, it is their willingness to break down barriers between each other to scale truly innovative solutions that I find most inspiring."

Canada is the latest country to join the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's Plastics Pact network, a globally-aligned response to plastic waste and pollution. In line with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's vision of a circular economy for plastic, the CPP facilitates innovation and knowledge sharing, and drives collaborative action and solutions tailored to Canada's unique needs and challenges.

"By setting clear 2025 targets and working together to achieve them, businesses and policymakers in the Canada Plastics Pact have taken an important step on the journey to a circular economy for plastic, in which it never becomes waste or pollution," says Sonja Wegge, Plastics Pact Programme Manager, Ellen MacArthur Foundation. "We are delighted to welcome the Canada Plastics Pact in our growing global network of Pacts, and hope to see many other organisations unite behind the vision of a circular economy for plastic that has already brought together more than 1,000 organisations worldwide through our New Plastics Economy initiative."

The immediate next step for the CPP to achieve its goals by 2025 is to develop a roadmap for action. To be fully transparent and ensure measurable action, a CPP progress report will be made publicly available each year.