SMI Hub joins the UK Plastics Pact as an academic supporter

We’re proud to announce that the Sustainable Materials Innovation Hub has joined the UK Plastics Pact as an academic supporter. The Pact is a multi-stakeholder initiative bringing together all kinds of organisations and individuals involved in the plastics value chain to change plastics for good. 

The UK Plastics Pact, led by WRAP, is the first of a global network of Pacts, enabled by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative, that brings together businesses from across the entire plastics value chain with UK governments and NGOs to tackle the scourge of plastic waste. We are creating a circular economy for plastics, capturing their value by keeping them in the economy and out of the natural environment.

Pact members will eliminate problematic plastics reducing the total amount of packaging on supermarket shelves, stimulate innovation and new business models and help build a stronger recycling system in the UK. Together we will ensure that plastic packaging is designed so it can be easily recycled and made into new products and packaging and, with the support of governments, ensure consistent UK recycling is met.

By 2025, The UK Plastics Pact will transform the UK plastic packaging sector and help stop plastics polluting the environment. Members have signed up to the following targets:

• Eliminate problematic or unnecessary single- use packaging through redesign, innovation or alternative (re-use) delivery models.
• 100% of plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable.
• 70% of plastic packaging effectively recycled or composted.
• 30% average recycled content across all plastic packaging.