中文The Alliance to End Plastic Waste has published its 2025 Progress Report, Strategy in Action, marking the first year of implementation under its Strategy 2030 framework and reporting cumulative reductions of 378,147 tonnes of unmanaged plastic waste and valorisation of 418,529 tonnes since its founding in 2019. In a sector weary of vague pledges, the hard numbers are the point.
In 2025 alone the Alliance reduced 138,162 tonnes of unmanaged plastic waste and valorized 165,317 tonnes. Since 2019 it has catalyzed USD 641m in funding commitments from third parties and impact investors and reached more than 1.5 million people through education and behaviour-change initiatives. In 2025 it engaged 559 organizations to finance, develop and implement its projects. Those are the metrics that separate an operating program from a press-release coalition.
Under Strategy 2030 the Alliance is shifting from standalone projects to larger-scale integrated Country Programs in Brazil, Saudi Arabia, India, Indonesia and South Africa, plus a Thematic Program in Europe and North America focused on flexible plastics, among the most widely used yet hardest-to-recycle materials. That focus should interest label and flexible-packaging converters directly, because flexible plastics are their daily output and their toughest end-of-life problem.
In the US the Alliance is piloting a new collection model for flexible plastics from commercial and industrial sites in Phoenix, Arizona, working with RME Defeats Waste to bring on-site baling and on-demand collection to smaller generators, including manufacturers and hospitals. It has also commissioned a study of the US flexible-plastics system to map supply and demand and quantify end-market opportunities for recycled flexible plastics. For converters navigating recyclate availability ahead of tightening extended-producer-responsibility requirements, that mapping is genuinely useful.
Jacob Duer, president and chief executive of the Alliance, called 2025 an important first year for Strategy 2030, saying the group strengthened the foundations for impact at scale and systems change and built momentum for the years ahead. The language is careful, and rightly so: plastic waste is a systems problem, and proving durable reduction requires infrastructure, behaviour change and end markets together, not a single intervention.
The report lands at a moment when packaging regulation is tightening across jurisdictions and brands are being asked to show not just recyclable design but actual recovered material. Converters that understand the collection and valorization side of flexible plastics will be better placed to advise customers and to specify materials with real end markets. The Alliance’s country programs are where that understanding gets built on the ground.
For the print and packaging community, the takeaway is that sustainability claims now travel with evidence. A 378,000-tonne reduction and a 641-million-dollar funding pull are the kind of figures procurement teams and regulators increasingly expect. The shops and suppliers engaging with these programs are not only doing the responsible thing; they are de-risking their own future as EPR schemes expand and recyclate demand outruns supply.
The Alliance’s report will not end plastic waste, and it does not claim to. But it shows a credible operating model moving from projects to systems, and for an industry whose products are scrutinized more than most, that progression from promise to measured outcome is the part worth reading.
Source: Labels & Labeling (https://www.labelsandlabeling.com/news/associations-events-awards/alliance-end-plastic-waste-publishes-progress-report).
The report lands at a moment when packaging regulation is tightening across jurisdictions and brands are being asked to show not just recyclable design but actual recovered material. Flexible plastics are the hard case: they are the most-used yet least-recycled packaging format, and without collection and end markets the best-intentioned mono-material design still ends in landfill or incineration. The Alliance’s Phoenix pilot, with on-site baling and on-demand collection from commercial and industrial sites, attacks exactly the part of the chain converters rarely see but depend on, because recyclate availability decides whether a flexible pack can honestly claim circularity.
For the label and flexible-packaging community, the takeaway is that sustainability claims now travel with evidence. A 378,147-tonne reduction and a USD 641m funding pull are the kind of figures procurement teams and regulators increasingly expect, and the shops and suppliers engaging with these programs are not only doing the responsible thing but de-risking their own future as extended-producer-responsibility schemes expand and recyclate demand outruns supply. Understanding the collection and valorization side of flexible plastics lets converters advise customers and specify materials with real end markets rather than optimistic labels.
The country programs in Brazil, Saudi Arabia, India, Indonesia and South Africa, plus the European and North American thematic program, also matter for global converters with cross-border clients, because packaging spec decisions are increasingly made against a patchwork of regional rules. A converter that can speak to recovery infrastructure in a customer’s key markets becomes a strategist rather than a supplier. The Alliance’s shift from standalone projects to integrated systems is the part worth reading, because it shows a credible operating model moving from promise to measured outcome, and for an industry whose products are scrutinized more than most, that progression is the credibility that survives audit.
