With 100 organisations and a ten-year collaborative programme, a new pact is seeking to transform packaging systems in the UK.

WRAP created the UK Packaging Pact with a new cross-sector agreement to help industry manage costs and address the part packaging plays in sustainability. The new agreement takes up from where its predecessor (the UK Plastics Pact) led and expands to every packaging material placed on the market from glass, paper, card, metal, as well as plastics and biobased materials.

Catherine David, CEO WRAP, said: “The UK Packaging Pact is a unique, complete system approach to unlocking packaging transitions across the value chain. No other programme brings together the key players needed to deliver the enormous changes we must make. Policies are essential, but they alone cannot deliver and the Packaging Pact will deliver the practical change necessary through a flexible framework allowing signatories to focus on the actions most important to them.”

Founding signatories include Aldi, ASDA, Biffa Waste Services, Charpak, Co-op, Danone UK, Haleon, Hilton Food Group, Innocent Drinks, Lidl GB, Marks and Spencer, Muller UK & Ireland Group, Ocado Retail, OPRL, SUEZ Recycling and Recovery UK, Sainsbury's Supermarkets, Tesco, Unilever UK & Ireland, Valpack, and William Jackson Food Group.

The UK Packaging Pact has four interconnected goals: optimise packaging, scaling reuse and refill, support infrastructure investment and harmonise data to simplify data reporting requirements through standardisation and alignment.

The Pact also provides a direct route for industry to help inform and shape how regulation is implemented in practice.

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