Berry Global has signed the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment to eliminate plastic pollution at its source. The New Plastics Economy Global Commitment is led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, in collaboration with UN Environment.

Berry’s involvement with the Global Commitment is complementary to its efforts with the Alliance to End Plastic Waste and furthers the company’s commitments to its recently announced sustainability strategy, Impact 2025.

“At Berry, we stand behind the power of plastics and are placing a priority on creating a more sustainable future. We are innovating our products to encourage recyclability, use of recycled content, and lightweighting. In conjunction with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, we are proud to accelerate the transition towards a circular economy,” says Tom Salmon, Berry chairman and CEO.

By signing the Global Commitment, Berry has pledged to:

Take action to eliminate problematic or unnecessary plastic packaging: Berry has been developing recyclable alternatives to replace non-recyclable packaging for many years. Berry will continue to develop widely recyclable packaging to replace less recyclable alternatives. In the near term, the company commits to develop a widely recyclable alternative for each of its polystyrene product lines by the end of 2020.

These commitments are complementary to Berry’s deep history of lightweighting success. Lightweighting is a process of design and engineering improvements that reduce the overall amount of plastic needed to deliver performance and protective properties of a product. This expertise has been at the core of the company’s business and is a key benefit of plastics.

100% of plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable: Berry has been and will continue to take steps to transition the market to packaging that is recyclable in today’s infrastructure. In addition to this, the company is introducing new products with enhanced recyclability, like Entour, a line of polyethylene films designed with recyclability in mind.

A target of 10% post-consumer recycled content across all plastic packaging used: As a longtime advocate of recycling and recycled content, Berry has set its goal to incorporate at least 10% recycled content into its fast-moving consumer goods packaging by 2025. As an initial step towards its effort to drive incremental demand for recycled content, the company introduced Verdant, a line of bottles, jars, tubes, caps, and closures, containing 25-100% recycled content. Berry will continue to incorporate recycled content in application as material which meets safety and performance requirements becomes available.

Take action to increase reusable packaging: Berry has commercialized multiple reusable packages in the past and will partner with customers on new reusable packaging applications and models. The company has committed to evaluate all of its product lines by the end of 2020 to determine the best potential markets for reusable packaging.