New Plastics Economy global commitment
Scotland is a signatory to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's New Plastics Economy global commitment to end plastic pollution, both as part of the wider UK and also in its own right as the Scottish Government.
We are leading the way on tackling the issue of plastics and this is shown by the fact we are a founding signatory to this commitment.
We are ambitious in our desire to move towards a circular economy and our strategy Making Things Last (2016) and proposed deposit return scheme mirror the vision and goals of this commitment. We are proud to be taking action on plastics and want to encourage other nations, cities and businesses to join us in this pledge.
There are six characteristics within the vision of the New Plastics Economy global commitment:
- elimination of problematic or unnecessary plastic packaging
- reuse models reducing the need for single-use packaging
- all plastic packaging is 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable
- all plastic packaging is reused, recycled, or composted in practice
- the use of plastics is fully decoupled from the consumption of finite resources
- all plastic packaging is free of hazardous chemicals, respecting health and safety