The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Plastics Pact network welcomes its latest European member with the official launch of Pacto Português para os Plásticos. Currently led by Smart Waste Portugal, with the support of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Action, the Ministry of Economy, and the Ministry of the Sea, the Portuguese Plastics Pact brings together key stakeholders across the plastics packaging value chain. Businesses, the Portuguese government, cities, NGOs, and academia are working towards a common vision for a circular economy in which plastic never becomes waste or pollution.
The Portuguese Plastics Pact joins the UK, France, Chile, The Netherlands, and South Africa as part of the global Plastics Pact network, a unique platform to exchange learnings and best practices across countries and regions to accelerate the transition to the circular economy for plastic.
Aligned with other national initiatives of the network, the Portuguese Plastics Pact members have committed to ambitious, joint 2025 targets, including:
- Defining a list of single-use plastic items deemed problematic or unnecessary and the measures for their elimination, through redesign, innovation or alternative (reuse) delivery models by the end of 2020
- Ensuring that 100% of plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable
- Increasing collections so that at least 70% of plastic packaging is effectively recycled
- Incorporating, on average, 30% of recycled plastic in new plastic packaging
Progress against these targets will be released publicly on an annual basis.
The Portuguese Plastics Pact currently has 23 members, including major food and beverage retailing brands and manufacturing industry recyclers. They are supported by an additional 24 organisations, including universities, non-profit organisations, business associations, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Action, the Ministry of Economy, and the Ministry of the Sea. The Pact aims to welcome many more organisations, and will start by setting up a 2025 roadmap to drive concerted action towards the agreed targets.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation welcomes the announcement of the Portuguese Plastics Pact, the latest national initiative to join our Plastics Pact global network. We are looking forward to supporting the government and industry of Portugal in driving real change towards a circular economy for plastic, by eliminating problematic and unnecessary plastic items, innovating to ensure that the plastics they do need are reusable, recyclable, or compostable, and circulating the plastic items they use to keep them in the economy and out of the environment. Together we can create a world without plastic waste or pollution.
The Portuguese Plastics Pact has a wide range representation of entities in the national plastics value chain, and therefore, a great capacity to create impact, and a great responsibility in promoting a transition to a circular plastics economy in Portugal. This collaborative initiative will play a fundamental role in ensuring the responsible, sustainable and circular use of plastics in Portugal, allowing to extract the maximum value from this material, without compromising the environment.
