News
07 Oct 2021

The Circular Plastics Alliance is kicking into high gear and working hard to reach 10 million tonnes of recycled plastics

20 September 2019 marks the date of the signature of the Declaration of the Circular Plastics Alliance (CPA), and with that, the commitment to ensure that at least 10 million tons of plastic are recycled to make new products by 2025. This target was endorsed by a variety of stakeholders, from small and medium businesses, to large corporations, business associations, standardisers, research organisations, and local and national authorities. EUROPEN has been and remains actively engaged in the success of this initiative by chairing the Packaging Working Group.

Concrete actions to reach the target include:

  • Improving the design of plastic products
  • Identifying untapped potential for more plastic waste collection, sorting and recycling
  • Building a Research & Development agenda for circular plastics
  • Establishing a transparent and reliable monitoring system to track all flows of plastic waste in the EU.

Fast forward to October 2021, the CPA has been living up to its commitments for action and deliverables as included in the Declaration of the Circular Plastics Alliance. Today, the Alliance represents almost 300 industry, academic and public sector organisations across the whole of the recycled plastics value chain and good progress has been made with an increase of almost 30% in European production of recycled plastics.

WHAT DID YOU MISS?

  • The CPA identified 26 priority products that the alliance is committing to make recyclable by 2025 and listed them in its updated work plan on design-for-recycling. The CPA also developed design-for-recycling guidelines as input for European standardisation (CEN-CENELEC), in a bid to turn these design-for-recycling guidelines into the new normal for products placed on the European market.
  • The CPA has also developed a roadmap to 10 million tonnes built on previous work by the CPA (including a state-of-play on collected and sorted plastic waste and an R&D agenda for circular plastics), in which a detailed analysis is provided on how to reach the target. The alliance intends to focus on the requirements and solutions for greater uptake of recycled plastics in products by 2025 and publish a follow-up report in early 2022. In addition, the CPA will regularly update its roadmap in cooperation with all interested stakeholders and authorities.
  • In order to track the progress made towards the 10 million tonnes of recycled plastics target, the CPA established a monitoring system.

WHAT'S NEXT?

  • Early 2022: The CPA will publish a new report on the requirements and solutions to increase the uptake of recycled plastics in products to 10 million tonnes by 2025.