We need a fundamental revaluing of plastic in a world in which there is no silver bullet. Plastic has run unchecked and unregulated for 150 years. Many good things are happening, but with stringent regulation - through the entire product life cycle from concept through production, distribution and disposal – real change will happen.

Credible, ambitious plans are needed from businesses to scale reuse, deal with the issue of flexible packaging and reduce the need for single-use packaging. 

An estimated 36 percent of all plastic produced in a year is used for packaging resulting in an increased focus on durability and lightweighting of the material. Packaging still creates high amounts of plastic waste each year – affirming the urgency for companies to build circular processes in packaging and invest to protect our future.

The ground is shifting in business management and how companies generally fit into modern capitalist economies. Sustainable offerings are growing. Businesses continuously seek to engage in responsible practices that give customers a reason to like them and find common ground with shared values. Our generation has the unique opportunity to reconcile the paradox between progress for all and a sustainable future for our planet,

Sustainability requires a global partnership

We need to reimagine our relationship with plastics to prevent plastic pollution becoming a threat to humanity that is as significant as climate change, say experts.

According to the 2021 report by Plastics Europe, over 29 million tonnes of plastic post-consumer waste were collected in the EU27+3 in 2020.

Last month, the European Commission (EC) announced its proposed revision of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive (PPWD) and was met with immediate outrage from the beverage industry.

There is no denying that, due to its near-infinite uses and applications and sheer speed from innovation to manufacturing, the world relies heavily on plastic.

As Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, puts it, our current economy is based on the belief that we can extract resources boundlessly, use them inefficiently, and discard them wantonly, drawing from the planet more than it can regenerate and polluting more than we can clean up.