I would love to say those last five years have been packed with achievements from our global CPGs and retailers. I also want to say our governments have stepped in, creating policy and empowering infrastructure to mitigate our plastic addiction and encourage significant investment in new materials of true circularity. 

Unfortunately, I can say none of these things. Instead, the world tires of the continual tokenism of our industries and governments, reflected in the findings by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation from their November 2022 report revealing many household names had utterly failed to achieve their plastic pledges, with virgin plastic use back to where it started in 2018.  

But one very important thing has happened since that cold February morning in Amsterdam. The bar of acceptable change is far higher. As it should be, now we know what we know.

Five years ago, many people believed compostable materials were the future. How amazing that we can have the benefits of plastic without the downside, or so we thought. We even included certified compostable materials in the Plastic Free Aisle, labelling them ‘Plastic Free’ in order to help shoppers understand that these new plastic-looking materials were in fact created to be composted, not landfilled or incinerated with traditional plastic. And, in hindsight, by doing that, we also became part of the problem. 

Flash forwards to 2023 and it has become clear that compostables are not solving the crisis we are facing. Yes, there are good and bad uses of these valuable materials, but the fundamental system has not developed at the speed and scale needed to compost even those materials that are being correctly used as a bio-conduit, taking food waste into a food waste system. The collection and rightful composting of food waste from every UK household remains another unachieved pledge. So the belief that your ‘compostable’ packaging solution is reaching the planned end-of-life is far from guaranteed.  We wound up our PlasticFree certification scheme almost 2 years ago, realising it was adding to confusion in a material world that was mired in misinformation and bogus recycling statistics.

But have hope. The world of innovation is moving very fast, leapfrogging ‘less bad’ solutions to a better way entirely. A new material language is rapidly evolving. Nutrient materials that slip easily into Nature’s never-ending toxin-free circle of growth creating nutrients creating growth creating nutrients, with no waste, ever.  Materials that are made useful without the addition of harmful chemicals. Materials that Nature knows how to handle without complex infrastructure.  Materials that start well, stay clean and end well.  Safe chemistry throughout the entire never-ending cycle has to be our goal. 

Almost more importantly, the alarm bell is ringing on the extraordinary level of natural resources we are using, often for single-use. In the last 6 years, we have used more resource than in the entire 20th century, taking our children’s future materials, using them today and calling them GDP.  Clearly we need to stop. And the solution for this is a shift to reusables, to pre-filled permanent packaging using standardised componentry that, finally, does complete the circle we all quest. If plastic was the material that broke our original system of reuse, repair, refill, share, rent; we are now in the renaissance that will catapult us into a fully regenerative manufacturing model. It won’t happen overnight, but we have to aim higher than ever before.

In turn, all this catalysed the process of substantially raising our own bar to create a robust standard of better materials. Through our new solutions platform, PlasticFree, we have built an empowering tool that learns from our past mistakes, creating a true springboard for change, championing true nutrient alternatives and fully circular systems. We quest a new level of transparency with all definitions and principles; a collective, collaborative knowledge hub to help demystify a confusing world that has hampered consensus on a clear direction. Delay that has cost our planet, and ourselves, dearly.

Every material evaluated against our new, robust standard starts but doesn’t end with the EU definition of plastic. No chemically modified polymers with toxic additives, regardless of feedstock, are deemed plastic free. Together with materials scientists, we explore and define ‘chemically modified’ and we demand safe chemistry. But the most significant message we communicate through the hundreds of case studies, proof points and editorials, is that we need to mitigate single use materials altogether and fully understand what Nature’s circular model of growth and nutrients can teach us. We cannot continue to take 1.75 planet’s worth of natural resources every single year, give nature back billions of tonnes of waste and call it ‘growth’ We need a fundamental shift, and we need it fast, if we are to have any future at all.