The World Economic Forum’s Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP), the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Plastics Initiative and international climate action NGO WRAP have joined forces to “drive forward global action” on plastics by improving knowledge exchange.
The three organisations, which share a common vision for a circular economy for plastics, have each been running national-level initiatives since 2018, which now span more than twenty countries, WRAP says.
The move comes in advance of the incoming International legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution to help prepare the groundwork and ready many more nations for the shift in the way plastic is produced and used that’s expected when the treaty begins, WRAP says.
Negotiations for the Plastics Treaty started last November and, once adopted by mid-2025, it will create an “unprecedented pressure” on country-level public and private stakeholders to assess their plastic use and design pathways for addressing pollution, WRAP says.
The climate action NGO says the new knowledge exchange network will bring together individual Plastics Pacts and National Plastic Action Partnerships (NPAP) to share “crucial information” to support their delivery plans.
WRAP created the world’s first Plastics Pact jointly with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
The knowledge exchange network brings together key stakeholders across sectors to implement solutions towards a circular economy for plastics tailored to each geography, WRAP says. Each initiative convenes businesses, government institutions and civil society, NGOs, and citizens to build behind a shared vision based on shared principles.
The principles include informing decision-making based on robust evidence, harmonised metrics, and best practice, ensuring an inclusive approach that engages perspectives from the entire plastic value chain, including vulnerable communities such as women and informal sector workers;
boosting innovation and enabling financing solutions to scale plastic action and transforming behaviours that promote new consumption and production models.
To eliminate plastic pollution, the network promotes solutions, which include eliminating unnecessary and problematic plastic packaging, moving from single-use to reuse, ensuring all plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable, or compostable, increasing the reuse, collection, and recycling or composting of plastic packaging and increasing recycled content in plastic packaging.
We know that nations often face the same challenges, so by sharing learnings we can accelerate progress.
Commenting on the collaboration, Richard Swannell, Interim CEO WRAP, said: “WRAP created the world’s first Plastics Pact jointly with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and is working with partners around the world on a variety of Pacts.
“Bringing our experience together with that of the World Economic Forum and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation means we can accelerate, expand, and enrich work underway in more than twenty countries.
“And bring even more countries on board. We know that nations often face the same challenges, so by sharing learnings we can accelerate progress and strengthen the ambitions of the Global Treaty with real action on the ground, in a significant and growing network of countries.”