Today, World Wildlife Fund's ReSource: Plastic program released its fourth annual public report, Transparent 2023, revealing how some of the world's largest brands are tracking, measuring, and reporting on their respective plastic footprints. The data compiled in the report reveals insights and in-depth recommendations on tackling plastic waste within internal, corporate supply chains, and across wider multi-stakeholder efforts. The elimination of unnecessary, single-use plastic continues to be the most important action that companies can take to directly address the plastic pollution crisis through their own portfolios.
Transparent 2023 examines the plastic footprints of ReSource Members Amcor, Colgate-Palmolive, CVS Health, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Keurig Dr Pepper, McDonald's Corporation, Procter & Gamble, Starbucks, and The Coca-Cola Company. The report captures each company's plastic by polymer type and form, their use of recycled content and sustainably sourced biobased content, and the likely waste management pathways for the aggregate portfolio. The comprehensive report includes progress made by each ReSource Member from 2021 to 2022 and compares year-over-year results for legacy Members.
"All companies should be reporting on their plastic footprint-something we are advocating for in the UN Global Treaty to End Plastic Pollution," said Erin Simon, vice president of plastic waste + business at World Wildlife Fund. "ReSource Member companies are ahead of the curve, demonstrating that plastic reporting is not an onerous or impossible task. Their transparency enables lessons to be learned and actions to be taken that will reverberate across supply chains and industries worldwide."
For the first time, ReSource is collecting comprehensive data from its Members on reuse efforts with the hope of sharing learnings on the best ways to eliminate plastic waste. WWF sees reuse systems emerging as a key strategy, with all nine Members exploring reuse in some capacity. This year's Transparent report also measured progress and captured invaluable insights across four areas, including: eliminating unnecessary plastic, doubling global recycling and composting, shifting to sustainable inputs for remaining plastic, and improving data harmonization.
As for the 2023 key findings, please see the below top-level highlights:
- Five ReSourceMembers saw an overall reduction in their virgin fossil-based plastic tonnage from 2021 to 2022.
- Of the nine Members, four have reduced and five have increased their absolute tonnage of plastic since their baseline.
- Despite progress in some areas, the total weight of plastic in the aggregate portfolio increased by 0.8% to 7.26 million metric tons in 2022 from 7.20 million metric tons in 2021.
- Overall, ReSource Members have made progress to reduce problematic plastics. In 2022, these products made up 1.2% of Member portfolios, which is less than half of the 3.2% in the 2018 baseline year.
- Among ReSource Members, the use of recycled content has increased to 12% in 2022 from 10.2% in 2021.
- The share of packaging that is recyclable has increased to 72.5% in 2022 from 70.4% in 2021.
Learn more about how ReSource measures and analyzes data through the ReSource Footprint Tracker here.
WWF recently joined the Steering Committee of the Scaling Plastics Disclosure initiative to inform and support the expansion of the CDP's plastic questionnaire. As the CDP questionnaire becomes increasingly robust and comprehensive, our intent is for it to replace the mandatory annual reporting for ReSource Members that currently occurs through the ReSource Footprint Tracker. As part of the Scaling Plastics Disclosure initiative and ReSource: Plastic, the ReSource Footprint Tracker serves as a tool for companies wishing to understand not only the amount and the kinds of plastics they are releasing into the market, but also the waste and leakage being generated as a result. It also provides a common framework for companies to report on their plastic impact.
Understanding the scope of the problem through plastic reporting is the first step to addressing plastic pollution. ReSourceMembers are demonstrating that plastic reporting is possible. However, voluntary corporate action is not sufficient to address the scale and urgency of the plastic waste crisis. National and international policy action, through a legally binding Global Treaty to End Plastic Pollution and Extended Producer Responsibility legislation, is critical to ensuring a future free of plastic waste. Six out of nine Members are actively engaged in the Global Treaty process.
To view the full report, click here. To view the executive summary, click here.
About World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
WWF is one of the world's leading conservation organizations, working in nearly 100 countries for over half a century to help people and nature thrive. With the support of more than 5 million members worldwide, WWF is dedicated to delivering science-based solutions to preserve the diversity and abundance of life on Earth, halt the degradation of the environment and combat the climate crisis. Visit http://www.worldwildlife.org to learn more and keep up with the latest conservation news by following @WWFNews on Twitter and signing up for our newsletter and news alerts here.
ReSource: Plastic Member Quotes
Amcor
"In addition to doing our job of helping to deliver products safely, we also make our packaging more circular by designing for recyclability, lowering the demand for virgin resources and using more recycled content. We have increased our target on recycled content use across the Amcor portfolio to 30% by 2030 and were the first global packaging company to pledge to design all our products to be recyclable, compostable or reusable by 2025." He added, "However, all of us in the packaging value chain need to work together to ensure that recycling infrastructure is in place, feasible reuse systems are introduced, and that consumers are engaged to use those systems to return used packages to be recycled or used over and over again." -- David Clark, Amcor's Vice President of Sustainability.
Colgate
"At Colgate-Palmolive we are excited to continue our partnership with WWF's ReSource program. WWF and our peer companies have worked hard to facilitate a key collaborative network that moves forward our sustainability ambition to Eliminate Plastic Waste. The WWF ReSource program is also supporting our collective work toward an ambitious UN Plastic Pollution Treaty." -Ann Tracy, CSO
Keurig Dr Pepper
"Keurig Dr Pepper's packaging strategy is centered on advancing the use of more sustainable packaging materials and designs that use less virgin plastic. We continue to make progress against our ambitious 2025 sustainable packaging goals, including the increase of post-consumer recycled content across our plastic packaging from 11% in 2021 to 18% in 2022. We appreciate the WWF's ReSource: Plastic program with data-driven recommendations to help drive industry focus on high impact actions." - Charlie Schwarze, Senior Director of Sustainability, Keurig Dr Pepper
The Coca Cola Company
"In partnership with others, we are addressing the critical issue of packaging waste. Our goal is to help create a circular economy by 2030 where we get every bottle back so that none of it ends up as litter or in the oceans. We've set ambitious packaging goals for our business to help eliminate waste and increase reuse across the Coca-Cola system. We have made progress and recognize we have much more to do. We know by partnering with other organizations and across sectors, we can achieve more. That's why we support a global treaty on marine plastic pollution and well-designed Extended Producer Responsibility legislation. We believe these efforts will help drive a more consistent approach to recycling infrastructure planning, investment and implementation across the world." -- Michael Goltzman, Global Vice President, Public Policy, Environmental Sustainability and Social Impact
Starbucks
"At Starbucks, our environmental promise to give back more than we take from the planet underpins our efforts to cut our waste, water, and carbon footprints in half by 2030. To further our waste reduction, we've continued our shift toward reusables, with 20 reusable cup tests in markets around the world, as well as industry-leading single-use packaging solutions, like the recent roll out of our FSC-certified single-use cup made with 30% recycled material and 25% less plastic in the liner and our transition to 100% rPET Ethos water bottles in US and Canada. As we look to the future to meet our ambitious goals, programs like ReSource are key for collaboration across sectors to drive meaningful progress," - Starbucks chief sustainability officer, Michael Kobori.
