As announced during New York Climate Week, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation is partnering with Builders Vision Philanthropy and Minderoo Foundation to tackle flexible plastic packaging waste and pollution by accelerating the scaling of responsibly-designed paper-based alternatives.
Together, the three organisations will drive a multi-year programme to build the market for responsibly designed paper-based flexible packaging, moving it from promising innovations toward at scale deployment. To do so, the programme aims to implement mutually reinforcing interventions, including: speeding up innovation, charting the path to cost competitiveness, informing policy, and mobilising finance.
Small-format flexible packaging is one of the biggest contributors to plastic packaging pollution and the resulting social, environmental and health impacts. Addressing it will take more than one tool to solve. Paper-based alternatives can be an important tool, provided they are responsibly designed, so that one set of problems is not traded for another. This includes being responsibly sourced and produced, recyclable, biodegradable and free of hazardous chemicals. Promising innovations are emerging, but paper packaging that meets all these criteria does not yet exist at the scale, cost, and performance the market needs.
The initiative builds on and is guided by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s widely endorsed publication Paper- Based Flexible Packaging – The role it could play in tackling small-format flexible plastic pollution in markets with high leakage rates and already engages over 70 stakeholders across industry, innovation, philanthropy, finance, academia, and NGOs. Its first major milestone was the recent launch of the PaperFlex Consortium, a research and development consortium convened by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and powered by (RE)SET, with founding members Colgate-Palmolive, Mars, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever.
Builders Vision is an investment and philanthropy platform that scales and accelerates innovative solutions in food and agriculture, energy, and oceans. Minderoo Foundation is an Australian philanthropy committed to building a bright future where people, communities and the environment we depend on can thrive.
“Our 2030 Plastics Agenda for Business identified small-format flexible packaging as one of the systemic barriers holding back progress on tackling plastic pollution. We are excited to partner with Builders Vision Philanthropy and Minderoo Foundation to tackle this challenge. Through this multi-year market building programme for responsibly designed paper-based flexible packaging, we aim to accelerate and guide their path from emerging innovations to commercial solutions deployed at scale.” Rob Opsomer, Executive Lead for Plastics and Packaging at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation
“Recognising that a healthy ocean system is directly tied to our economic stability and a more resilient future, Builders Vision is partnering with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to address one of the biggest sources of plastic pollution: small-format flexible packaging. Building a thriving market for paper-based alternatives is essential to deploying these solutions at scale. By uniting multiple stakeholders, this programme targets the major hurdles currently holding the market back: high costs, fragmented R&D, and a lack of both market pull and enabling policy.” Jelani Odlum, Program Officer – Oceans at Builders Vision
“Flexible single-use plastics are the largest source of plastic packaging pollution and cannot be easily fixed by better downstream waste management and recycling. We are excited to join this partnership to tackle the plastics problem at its source, backing promising alternative materials with philanthropic capital to overcome market barriers and enable at-scale adoption as a safer, sustainable substitute." John Hartman, CEO at Minderoo Foundation
