After a decade of concerted effort, leading companies have bent the curve on virgin plastics in packaging. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s new 2030 Plastics Agenda for Business provides the blueprint to build on this progress in eliminating plastic waste and pollution in the years ahead.
Over the past ten years, more than 1,200 businesses and organisations have united behind a shared vision for plastics. Through the Global Commitment, companies representing 20% of global plastic packaging have already demonstrated that change is possible. They are ahead of increasing regulation and are using the circular economy as a competitive strategy to build long term resilience. Now, with growing policy attention, the next five years will be decisive.
After a decade of concerted effort, leading companies have bent the curve on virgin plastics in packaging. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s new 2030 Plastics Agenda for Business provides the blueprint to build on this progress in eliminating plastic waste and pollution in the years ahead.
Over the past ten years, more than 1,200 businesses and organisations have united behind a shared vision for plastics. Through the Global Commitment, companies representing 20% of global plastic packaging have already demonstrated that change is possible. They are ahead of increasing regulation and are using the circular economy as a competitive strategy to build long term resilience. Now, with growing policy attention, the next five years will be decisive.
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Drawing on ten years of experience, the 2030 Plastics Agenda for Business identifies a clear set of priority actions for business. While individual company action has been — and remains — essential, it will not be enough on its own. The next wave of progress requires market transformation. We urge businesses to back this agenda, engage in collaborative action and collective advocacy — and don't get left behind.
Even the most ambitious businesses are running up against the same obstacles — scaling reuse systems, tackling flexible plastic waste, and building collection and recycling infrastructure. These are systemic barriers that no company can overcome alone. Policy gaps, misaligned incentives, and current economics are holding back progress at scale.
This agenda underlines the crucial role of government in tackling these barriers. But businesses have a vital role to play in advocating for these enabling conditions, using their collective influence to shape the rules of the game.
By joining forces, businesses can go further and faster, stimulating effective policy and lowering the cost of transition. Through collective advocacy, businesses can speak with one voice and help create the conditions for all players to benefit. Through collaborative action, businesses can pool risks and establish new behaviours, infrastructure, and supply chains, while demonstrating where policy gaps remain.
This 2030 agenda is, intentionally, not an exhaustive list of all actions required. Mobilising large-scale collective action and advocacy demands focus. This agenda provides that focus, setting out some of the highest-priority actions, informed by a decade of mobilising the industry.
By combining collective advocacy, collaborative action, and individual action, businesses can help transform the market, with priority actions targeting each systemic barrier. By following this agenda, the industry can concentrate its collective effort to accelerate the elimination of plastic waste and pollution.
We will focus our efforts on tackling the systemic barriers to progress — by publishing evidence, informing policymakers, and supporting increasingly ambitious collaborative action with our business network, while transparently reporting on progress.
The 2030 Plastics Agenda for Business sets out how organisations can engage in collaborative action, influence effective policy through collective advocacy, and ultimately accelerate the transition to a circular economy.
Join 1200 organisations united behind a shared vision of a circular economy.
Join our webinar to hear what the Foundation and its partners have learned from the past decade, the plan and priority actions for business and policy to drive implementation at scale and what role leading businesses can play, from strategy, to mindset, to communications.