The Plastics Pact was launched by then Environment Secretary Michael Gove in April 2018 – and has more than 120 signatories including retailers, manufacturers and recycling companies. Its aim is to eliminate “problematic or unnecessary” single-use plastic packaging by 2025, and to ensure 100% of plastic packaging is recyclable.
The report titled ‘Reusable Packaging Roundtables’, summarised the outcomes of discussions held between August 2022 and March 2023. These brought together members of The UK Plastics Pact “to consider the barriers and opportunities for collaboration, with the aim of driving increased uptake of reusable packaging”.
Its three milestone targets for 2025 were:
• Increase the availability and visibility of reusable packaging through brand and retailer trials
• Increase citizen participation in reusable packaging systems
• Make reuse a mainstream packaging choice, through the scaling and commercialisation of reusable packaging systems
The report explained that currently, “the ambition is unlikely to be met”. WRAP designed the Reusable Packaging Roundtable series to engage directly with members to explore the barriers faced by businesses trying to implement trials and scale solutions and investigate the opportunities for cross-sector collaboration.
The document then listed the key challenges, some of which were limited access for citizens to purchase reusable packaging, limited visibility of successful reusable packaging systems for businesses including metrics and cost models and current regulatory settings which can discourage reusable packaging system development and adoption.
Recommendations
In a bid to stimulate renewed action on reuse among Pact members, the report produced a number of recommendations.
This includes engaging with the government on the key questions of regulation, legislation, extended producer responsibility (EPR) and deposit return scheme (DRS) and collaborating with other organisations in the reusable packaging chain to develop the vision for what a shared reuse infrastructure for the UK could look like.
WRAP also called for an agreed methodology to record and measure reuse data in order to demonstrate the impact of reuse as well as sector specific washing standards for reusable consumer packaging.
The report also suggested creating a “pre-competitive space” in which full learnings from trials can be shared between members to enable decision making based on real data and evidence, with innovation risk shared also through collaborative cross-supply chain projects to develop scalable reuse solutions. The document also mentioned that Competition and Markets Authority could be approached regarding changes to UK Competition Law “to encourage the easing of competition law restrictions to enable enhanced collaboration to deliver environmentally beneficial initiatives”.
‘Vital’
With collaboration being the recurring theme, the report concluded that “in order to create the paradigm shift required to embed reusable packaging systems in the UK marketplace, collaborative pathways are required to standardise and scale solutions and mitigate the costs associated with independent reusable packaging initiatives”.
It added that this is also recognised by businesses and will help maintain an affordable product offering for the consumer. Coupled with the three key pillars of ease of use, citizen appeal and system accessibility, this will be “vital in unlocking the potential for reusable packaging, to enable wide-reaching citizen engagement and participation and transition reusable packaging to a mainstream audience”, the document outlined.
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