The beauty industry runs on plastic, creating an estimated 120 billion units of plastic packaging waste, according to research from Zero Waste Research. In 2018, almost 7.9 billion units of rigid plastic were created in the US just for beauty and personal care products.
Measuring and reporting plastic packaging use in the US presents significant challenges, making it difficult to set and achieve targets that promote a sustainable, circular economy for plastics. The U.S. Plastics Pact aims to solve this by bringing together businesses, not-for-profit organizations, government agencies, and research institutions to foster a new approach to measuring the circularity of the item the consumer buys. This approach requires updated data collection systems and processes, as well as a better understanding of the definitions.
Each year, the U.S. Plastics Pact releases a report outlining aggregate data on progress toward its ambitious goals, along with key actions taken by the U.S. Pact and its member organizations (also referred to as Activators) in the previous year. U.S. Plastics Pact Activators are a diverse group of 130 members spanning the entire plastics value chain, including brands, retailers, reclaimers, converters, material suppliers, nonprofits, trade associations, government agencies, and public sector organizations, including L'Oréal, Unilever, Target, Walmart, and Krave Beauty.
The U.S. Plastics Pact recently released its 2023-2024 Impact Report, showcasing progress toward its 2025 targets to tackle plastic waste at its source. These targets include:
In this latest report, the U.S. Plastics Pact shared its 2023 annual data from Activators and introduced its next strategic plan, Roadmap 2.0. Addressing concerns about whether the initial targets were too ambitious, U.S. Plastics Pact CEO Jonathan Quinn emphasized the importance of setting brazen targets.
“Modest, easily attainable goals do not spark meaningful change,” Quinn says in his opening letter. “We MUST set bold, challenging targets and act with urgency and intention if we are to achieve a circular economy for plastics in time to make a difference for our planet.”
“Through the hard work of our Activators, the U.S. Plastics Pact already has achieved many deliverables that are essential to reaching our targets—achievements that cannot be overstated. However, to fully build a circular economy for plastics, every individual and organization has a role to play. From the products we choose to the systems we design, we must act with urgency to ensure plastics remain an asset, not a liability. By working together—through personal responsibility, public-private collaboration, and innovation—we can drive change and strengthen America’s competitiveness in the global circular economy.”
Below are a few of the most important insights from the U.S. Pact’s 2023-2024 Impact Report.
2025 Target Progress
The U.S. Pact’s consumer packaged goods, retailer, and converter Activators produced 33% of plastic packaging in scope in the US by weight, placing 5.57 million metric tons of plastic on the market. The top three plastic packaging formats represented within the U.S. Pact by tonnage were PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles, HDPE (high-density polyethylene) bottles, and PP (polypropylene) other rigid packaging.
22% of business Activators did not sell any of the 11 items on the U.S. Pact’s Problematic and Unnecessary Materials List in 2023, with ongoing progress expected through 2025. This includes things like cutlery, stirrers, straws, intentionally added per- and polyfluoroalkyl- substances (PFAS), and foamed PET, among others. The 11 items listed are not currently reusable, recyclable, or compostable and are not expected to be compatible with US infrastructure at scale by 2025.
By 2030, Activators are expected to eliminate materials from their packaging that were added to the Problematic and Unnecessary Materials List in 2024. Roadmap 2.0 outlines a cadence to review additional potential problematic or unnecessary items to ensure relevance is maintained in subsequent years, including emerging chemicals of concern and an added emphasis on source-reduction goals.
50% of the plastic packaging, by weight, placed on the market by U.S. Pact Activators is reusable, recyclable, or compostable. 66% of plastic packaging placed on the market by U.S. Pact Activators is designed for reuse, recyclability, or compostability. To help businesses navigate the complexities of designing packaging for reuse, recycling, and composting systems, U.S. Pact created Design for Circularity Playbooks. Activators are encouraged to adopt these standards within their organizations.
The national U.S. recycling rate for plastic packaging is 13.3%. However, the U.S. Pact notes that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not calculated the national recycling rate for plastics since 2018, which is where this figure comes from. The EPA’s National Strategy to Prevent Plastic Pollution, published in late 2024, emphasizes the necessity of federal policies to tackle plastic waste. Yet, the organization has failed to reestablish a national recycling rate as a baseline.
“We cannot manage what we do not measure,” U.S. Pact’s report reads. “Establishing this baseline is essential for businesses to invest confidently in innovation and infrastructure.”
In alignment with the EPA’s strategy, the U.S. Pact advocates for a national Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) framework. It argues that this framework will help adequately finance the collection and sortation of plastic packaging. EPR will also promote better design and greater utilization of post-consumer recycled (PCR) content.
As part of Roadmap 2.0, the U.S. Pact is developing PCR targets by packaging format to increase the demand for PCR in all types of packaging. By driving demand for PCR in packaging categories with emerging technologies and infrastructure, the organization seeks to support the financial viability of these investments, leading to the collection and recycling of more packaging formats to meet the U.S. Pact’s goal of effectively recycling or composting 50% of plastic packaging.
The average PCR or responsibly sourced biobased content used by U.S. Pact Activators was 11% in 2023. This figure is up from 8% in 2021 and 9.4% in 2022.
Limited supply of high-quality PCR is a key constraint in progress toward the U.S. Pact’s goal of achieving an average of 30% recycled or responsibly sourced, bio-based content by 2025. Activators are required to have publicly stated commitments to utilize PCR in their packaging. At the end of 2023, nearly all packaging users had publicly stated PCR commitments, demonstrating a strong increased demand for PCR. To assist companies in purchasing and qualifying PCR and increase engagement across their supply chains, the U.S. Pact updated its PCR procurement toolkit in 2024, which includes PCR Certification Principles for both mechanically and chemically recycled plastic.
Case Study: Pact Collective’s NewMatter
Pact Collective is a nonprofit that aims to provide collection programs and educational resources for the beauty industry and is one of the U.S. Pact’s 130 Activators. Through partnerships with brands and retailers like Ulta Beauty, Sephora, ILIA, and Westman Atelier, among others, Pact Collective’s collection programs help close the loop on beauty's hard-to-recycle packaging.
Recently, Pact Collective took the next step in its mission with NewMatter, a resin with 100% recycled content created using material from its beauty packaging collection programs.
Pact partnered with clean beauty retailer Credo Beauty to pilot the NewMatter 100% recycled content resin. Collaboration across Credo’s supply chain resulted in the creation of a mono-material pump made of ~83% NewMatter resin. The pump production used 500 kg of recycled plastic, saving the equivalent of 86 gallons of gasoline or 10,396 kWh of energy. The resin is now commercially available to Pact Collective members.
Roadmap 2.0
As the U.S. Pact looks ahead to 2025 and beyond, it plans to carry forward the unfinished targets from the original plan and introduce new objectives to address plastic waste and drive systemic change across the entire plastics value chain. The Roadmap 2.0 targets are as follows:
For more information or to become an Activator of the U.S. Plastics Pact, contact takeaction@usplasticspact.org.
