Global Plastics Pact Updates Targets — Stronger Traceability Requirements Added to Accelerate Circular Economy
NEW YORK, November 20, 2025 — The U.S. Plastics Pact, a core member of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s global Plastics Pact network, today announced a comprehensive revision of its 2025 targets, extending critical deadlines to 2030 while embedding mandatory traceability and transparency requirements across the entire plastic packaging value chain. The updated Roadmap reflects systemic challenges in recycling infrastructure and the growing regulatory emphasis on verifiable supply chain data, positioning digital tracking as a non-negotiable component of corporate accountability.
The recalibrated framework reflects hard data: only 37% of plastic packaging placed on the U.S. market by Pact Activators met reusability, recyclability, or compostability standards in 2020, while the national plastic packaging recycling rate stagnated at 13%. Under the strengthened targets, all Activators must now implement auditable traceability systems by 2027, ensuring every polymer batch can be tracked from raw material sourcing through end-of-life processing. This mandate aligns with emerging global standards, including the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation’s requirement for technical files and batch-level documentation to verify compliance. For implementation guidance, companies can reference the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s established framework for supply chain transparency.
“The original 2025 goals catalyzed unprecedented collaboration, but opaque supply chains and inconsistent data have fundamentally slowed progress,” said Dr. Emily Tipaldo, Executive Director of The U.S. Plastics Pact. “By mandating traceability—not just recommending it—we’re forcing the systemic transparency needed to unlock capital investment, validate recycled content claims, and ensure environmental benefits are real, not theoretical.” Dr. Tipaldo emphasized that the new requirements will leverage World Wildlife Fund’s ReSource: Plastic Footprint Tracker, which 100% of Activators already use for annual reporting, but will now require quarterly data submissions and upstream supplier verification.
The five updated targets eliminate four problematic and unnecessary materials—down from the original 2025 list—by 2030, while requiring all plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable by the same year. The recycled content mandate remains at 30% average post-consumer resin, but introduces a 30% virgin plastic reduction requirement, a new addition responding to stakeholder feedback. Critically, the Pact now demands that by 2028, all packaging include digital markers—QR codes or embedded barcodes—linking to standardized material passports that document polymer type, recycled content percentage, and compliance with chemical safety standards such as pending BPA restrictions. This digital layer addresses a core failure in previous voluntary regimes, where inadequate traceability exposed brands to reputational risk and regulatory non-compliance.
Market dynamics underscore the urgency. China’s 2025 green packaging regulations now mandate QR-based traceability for e-commerce packaging, while the EU’s PPWR requires mass balance accounting with full audit trails for chemical recycling claims. In the U.S., FSMA 2025 rules tie packaging traceability directly to food safety compliance, creating cross-sector pressure for unified systems. The Pact’s 2030 alignment strategy directly responds to this fragmentation, offering Activators a single reporting framework that satisfies multiple jurisdictions. Current Activators—including Aldi, Kraft Heinz, and Google—have committed to the “Activator Accelerators” program, which provides technical support for integrating blockchain-enabled tracking platforms.
Despite momentum, challenges persist. Recent departures by Walmart, Nestlé, and Mars revealed fundamental misalignments between target ambition and infrastructure reality; Mars explicitly cited delayed design and infrastructure changes as barriers to 2025 goals. However, the Pact’s new approach modularizes accountability: rather than broad portfolio commitments, companies must now demonstrate facility-level traceability and material-specific progress, reducing systemic risk while maintaining aggregate impact. Baseline data shows Activators increased post-consumer recycled content from 7% to 9.4% between 2020-2023—a modest gain that traceability-enabled procurement could accelerate by matching supply with verified demand.
The Roadmap’s transparency provisions extend beyond corporate reporting. By 2029, the Pact will publish a publicly accessible Materials Registry mapping recyclability grades, chemical compositions, and reprocessing locations for all Activator packaging—a move designed to eliminate greenwashing and empower investors to assess plastic-related risks. This registry will interface with emerging U.S. state-level extended producer responsibility schemes, creating a de facto national compliance database.
About The U.S. Plastics Pact
The U.S. Plastics Pact is a collaborative initiative uniting over 100 businesses, government agencies, and NGOs to create a circular economy for plastic packaging in the United States. Convened by The Recycling Partnership and World Wildlife Fund, the Pact operates within the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s global Plastics Pact network, driving collective action through ambitious targets, standardized measurement, and transparent reporting via WWF’s ReSource: Plastic Footprint Tracker.
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