The Solid Waste Association of North America has joined the Canada Plastics Pact, part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Plastics Pact Network. The organization aims to create a “shared vision for a circular economy for plastic packaging” through a series of 2025 goals. 

SWANA has shifted its mission in recent years to emphasize resource management over solid waste management, and its partnership with CPP fits with that vision, said Amy Lestition Burke, SWANA’s CEO and executive director.

“Our members provide critical roles in collecting and processing plastics to enable recycling and to prevent plastic pollution. We are building connections to support designing for recycling, strengthening demand for recycled content, and supporting critical infrastructure,” she said in a statement. 

CPP has four main targets it aims to meet by 2025: ensure at least 50% of plastic packaging is effectively recycled or composted; achieve 30% recycled content in plastic packaging; and support efforts for 100% of plastic packaging to be designed to be reusable, recyclable or compostable. It also created a list of “problematic or unnecessary” packaging it aims to eliminate by 2025.

CPP, launched in 2021, now has more than 100 members. The group lists numerous major brands and recyclers as “signatories,” including companies such as Emterra and TerraCycle. It also includes “implementation partners” that represent sectors such as recycling, research, local government and consultants. The Association of Plastic Recyclers, Circular Materials, Upstream, the National Zero Waste Council and numerous provincial recycling groups are also CPP implementation partners.

“To eliminate plastic waste and pollution, we need a holistic strategy that includes both upstream and downstream solutions,” said Cher Mereweather, CPP’s managing director, in a statement welcoming SWANA to the pact. 

SWANA is also a member of the U.S. Plastics Pact, which aims to achieve similar goals as its Canadian counterparts. USPP recently released an updated strategic plan extending the deadline for some of its recycling and recycled content goals to 2030 instead of 2025. It also updated guidance for participating companies and organizations on how to design, use and reuse plastics in packaging.

CPP said it plans to announce updates to its own strategic plan in “early summer.”

SWANA was also in attendance at recent United Nations meetings in Ottawa meant to negotiate an internationally binding instrument on plastics pollution that’s widely referred to as a global plastics treaty. SWANA said it sees the work as “a key piece to eliminating plastic pollution.”