With EMF’s New 2030 Plastics Agenda Targets, Signatories Pivot from Ambition to Scale

EMF’s own recap of the first chapter of the Global Commitment is explicit: leading brands, suppliers, and retailers proved progress is possible, but they remain a minority. Signatories representing roughly 20% of the global plastic-packaging market delivered measurable wins, like avoiding millions of tons of virgin plastic, tripling recycled content and eliminating billions of problematic items. Yet the remaining 80% of the market had on average performed much worse. EMF frames the lesson bluntly: voluntary company targets are necessary, but not sufficient. Systemic barriers, like cost, the need for shared infrastructure, and fragmented policy, have prevented scale.

That reality explains the Agenda’s emphasis on collaborative projects and policy. EMF no longer positions individual corporate ambition as the only route; it positions industry-wide coordination and advocacy as the path to making those ambitions feasible across the brand owner landscape.EMF’s new 2030 agenda expands the focus from voluntary brand efforts to coordinated market transformation — combining individual, collaborative, and policy-driven action.Ellen MacArthur Foundation

Brands weigh in

• Jonquil Hackenberg (CEO, EMF): “After a decade of action … this 2030 business agenda gives us a plan for implementation at pace and at scale.”
• Rob Opsomer (Executive Lead, Plastics, EMF): “Many business leaders ask me what comes next. My answer is simple: don’t wait. The companies that act now can help shape effective policies and make circular solutions the new normal.”
• Nathalie Alquier (Danone): Danone stresses it is “renewing our commitment” while acknowledging the real constraints — slow tech and infrastructure development and the lack of harmonized regulation — and argues that voluntary action must be matched by strong public investment and policy.
• PepsiCo (corporate statement): PepsiCo’s submission underscores support for “collaborative action and collective advocacy in this 2030 Business Agenda as a vital roadmap for change,” a succinct endorsement of the Agenda’s three-leg approach. (EMF materials carry PepsiCo’s corporate statement as part of the signatory roster.)
• Fisk Johnson (SC Johnson): points to hard numbers — SC Johnson met its 2025 goals and is now setting ambitious 2030 targets for PCR and virgin reduction while pushing for EPR laws to lock in the economics of recycling.
• From Unilever, Pablo Costa, global head of Packaging, Digital and Transformation, echoed the emphasis on partnership: “Ending plastic pollution and keeping plastic in circulation requires innovation, infrastructure, and enabling policy — combined with focused, collective action and advocacy right across the plastics value chain, as identified in this 2030 Plastics Agenda.”
• “Nestlé will continue to contribute towards the common vision of a circular economy for plastics,” said Antonia Wanner, chief sustainability officer at Nestlé. “Building on years of effort to evolve our packaging, we look forward to collective action on the 2030 Plastics Agenda for Business, working with the Foundation and value chain partners. Together we aim to overcome systemic barriers by building broader systems and a policy landscape for the circular economy.”
• “At L'Oreal, we know that lasting solutions are built through collaboration. This is why we have partnered with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation since 2018 to help accelerate the transition to a circular economy. L’Oréal is determined to support the newly launched Global Commitment 2030, setting its own ambition to reduce by 50% in absolute terms the use of virgin plastic for product packaging by 2030 versus 2019, and to continue to encourage consumers to embrace refills as the latest beauty ritual for a more sustainable future,” says Ezgi Barcenas, chief corporate responsibility officer at L'Oreal. 

These voices convey a common tone. Firms want to keep moving on product and packaging improvements, but they expect policy and shared projects to carry the next, more difficult phase of system change.The 2030 Plastics Agenda for Business organizes brand and supplier actions under three levers—individual, collaborative, and collective—to scale reuse, drive innovation in flexible packaging, and expand recycling infrastructure.Ellen MacArthur Foundation

How the agenda addresses earlier failings

EMF says it has explicitly redesigned the Global Commitment for 2030 to reflect three core learnings from 2018–2025:

1. Make reporting and targets simpler and more meaningful. A single central target for brands/retailers (virgin plastic reduction) is intended to reflect multiple circular pathways in one metric.
2. Stop asking each brand or CPG (or retailer or converter) to do everything on their own. The agenda formalizes collaborative pilots and demonstrators (multi-brand, city/country scale) to show where shared infrastructure and financing can work.
3. Pair corporate ambition with collective advocacy. EMF is asking its signatories to co-advocate for policy as a critical lever that makes private-sector investments bankable.Since 2018, plastics legislation worldwide has surged — from EPR frameworks in Colombia to the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation — underscoring why EMF’s 2030 agenda treats policy as a key lever for circular progress.Ellen MacArthur Foundation

The new agenda evolves the landscape for brands & CPGs

For packaging design, equipment, and materials decision makers the Agenda signals three practical takeaways:

• Expect to see fewer standalone pilots and more multi-brand demonstrators that require packaging interoperability, common washing/collection logistics and shared financing models.
• Design choices increasingly will be judged against whether they support system scalability (recyclability, PCR uptake, or reusability at demonstrator scale).
• If you aren’t already working with peers on advocacy, signatories will increasingly be expected to. EMF’s logic is that durable system changes need rules and funding mechanisms (EPR, fiscal incentives) that only policy can deliver.

The 2030 Plastics Agenda is an explicit response to the hard truth of the first Global Commitment, stakeholders and EMF say. Leadership matters, but leadership alone won’t change an industry shaped by fragmented infrastructure and uneven policy. The Foundation’s prescription is to simplify metrics, scale collaboration, and co-advocate for policy, a playbook that’s both pragmatic and intentionally business-facing. 

Ellen MacArthur FoundationWhether the approach will close the gap between the 20% of leaders and the 80% of laggards will depend on the quality of the demonstrators, the willingness of peer competitors to collaborate, and whether governments deliver the consistent policy frameworks EMF says are essential. The Agenda is the playbook, stakeholders say; the next test will be execution at scale.