April 10, 2023 (press release) –
As a part of the recent Sustainability & Save Food Working group meeting, 21 countries, including Finland, Austria, Italy, Poland, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, England, United States of America, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Vietnam, United Arab Emirates, Israel, India, China, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand, came together to discuss the latest trends, barriers, challenges and initiatives within their country and region.
What is interesting is that the sentiment is the same in every corner of the globe, in that, whilst a lot is happening in circular and sustainable design, a lot more needs to be done to realistically be able to meet packaging and waste targets globally, regionally and locally.
The common themes look at designing out waste at the start, eliminating problematic materials, phasing out single use plastics, incorporating more recycled content into products, and ensuring that the materials and packaging that is put out into the market is in fact capable of being collected, sorted, recycled, reprocessed and put back into other solution.
WPO Members Sustainability Programs & Initiatives
Key initiatives and programs that are being developed across the WPO member countries include:
- Moving soft plastics and flexible packaging to mono material formats that can be recycled and/or reprocessed through Advanced Recycling facilities, Kerbside collection or Return to Store programs.
- Developing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Regulations.
- Establishing Plastics Pacts and roadmaps for the country or region.
- Creating Deposit Return Schemes/Container Deposit Schemes.
- Building facilities for recycled content.
- Establishing Single Use Plastics (SUP) Regulations.
- Improving Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) capabilities and technologies.
- Building Advanced/Chemical Recycling facilities.
- Developing Consumer Education for Recycling.
- Creating on-pack labelling programs to help guide consumers to recycle correctly.
WPO Members strive for collaboration and knowledge sharing
With so much happening across the world, WPO offers a unique platform to be able to bring together developed and developing countries together in one room to regularly and openly discuss what is happening globally, regionally and locally.
WPO recognises that no country can do this by themselves. By sharing knowledge, on not only the positive sides of sustainability, but also openly discussing challenges, barriers and learnings that have come from some of these programs, will enable all to have a clearer view on what needs to be done in the different regions to meet global, regional and local packaging and waste targets.
Everyone has a role to play to ensure that packaging is being designed to provide the lowest environmental impacts wherever possible and that the materials and formats are fit-for-purpose, functional and truly capable of being collected, sorted, recycled and reprocessed in the country that it is sold in.
- The WPO position paper is now available for download free of charge on the website: https://www.worldpackaging.org/resources/28/
- or via the PDF Link: https://worldpackaging.org/Uploads/2023-02/ResourcePDF51_1675967696.pdf
The Position Paper was coordinated by WPO Vice President Sustainability & Save Food, Nerida Kelton. For more information send an e-mail to nerida@worldpackaging.org.
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