Summary

This second Global Commitment progress report shows that the signatory group made progress in their first year after signing the Global Commitment, but a substantial acceleration of progress will be needed in the coming years to achieve the 2025 targets.

Significant advances have been made in two key areas: the incorporation of recycled content in plastic packaging, and the phase out of the most commonly identified problematic categories of plastic packaging, such as PS, PVC, undetectable carbon black, single-use plastic bags, and straws.

However, there has been limited progress on increasing recyclability of plastic packaging and on reducing the need for single-use packaging altogether: progress on shifting towards reusable packaging is limited, and elimination efforts remain focused on a relatively small set of materials and formats.

There are also significant differences in the rate of progress between signatories – while some have taken big steps forward, others have shown little to no progress against quantitative targets. We urge those signatories that have made limited progress this year to significantly increase their efforts to ensure they are on course to meet their 2025 commitments.

In response to these findings, and the latest peer-reviewed science, the Foundation and the UN Environment Programme make four calls to action in this report. These will be vital to deliver on 2025 targets, and achieve the broader system shift required.

We call on businesses to:

• Take bold action on packaging types that are not recyclable today — either developing and executing a credible roadmap to make recycling work, or decisively innovating away from them
• Set ambitious reduction targets

We call on governments to:

• Establish policies and mechanisms that provide dedicated and stable funding for collection and sorting, through fair industry contributions, such as EPR, without which recycling is unlikely to ever scale

• Set a global direction and create an international framework for action, through the UN Environment Assembly, building on the vision for a circular economy for plastics