From flexible plastic bags to single-use jugs, plastics are completely embedded in our everyday lives. This pervasiveness has led to plastic waste ending up in our landfills, oceans, and bodies — a problem that can’t be stopped by one organization alone. Luckily, there’s a network for the job.
We spoke with Cher Mereweather, Managing Director of the Canada Plastics Pact, about how this organization’s collaborative efforts are keeping the right plastics in the economy and all plastics out of people, animals, and nature.
How does the Canada Plastics Pact (CPP) bring together diverse stakeholders to create a circular economy for plastics?
What attracts industry, associations, government, academia, and nonprofits to the Canada Plastics Pact is its vision: to eliminate plastic waste and pollution in Canada. We all know that no single organization or sector can solve the plastic crisis alone.
Plastics are ubiquitous, complex, and completely embedded in our value chains. Eliminating plastic waste and pollution presents significant challenges, including complex material design, insufficient reuse and recycling infrastructure, limited end markets for recycled materials, and the lack of harmonized approaches across Canada. To solve these challenges, it will require a mobilization of leaders and experts across sectors — that’s where the CPP steps in.
Take, for example, the challenges surrounding the recycling of film and flexible plastic packaging. Flexibles account for 41% of plastic packaging generated in Canada but only about 4% of it gets recycled. To address this issue, we established our Flexibles Working Group and brought together experts to lead it. In 2023, we released a shared action plan focused on addressing the complexities of flexible plastic packaging and outlined the steps needed.
Through this work, a key challenge identified with flexible packaging is the use of multi-layer materials. A typical flexible plastic package, such as a bag of nuts, can consist of up to nine different layers of material. Our Golden Design Rules for Plastics Packaging — nine design rules focused on improving the recyclability of plastic packaging — calls for moving to a single, or “mono-material.”
So, while it can still have multiple layers, they are all of the same material, making it easier to capture and recycle. We’ve shared guidance on how to make this transition, and in 2024, alongside the U.S. Plastics Pact, we co-hosted an exclusive knowledge series to identify innovative ways to address some of the technical challenges in transitioning to mono-material flexibles and films.
Our Flexibles Group is one of 10 Working Groups at the CPP bringing together diverse expertise to tackle the barriers and challenges in areas such as source reduction, packaging redesign, reuse systems, recycled content, policy and infrastructure, and data transparency, to name a few.
At CPP, our goals are ambitious because the stakes are high. With landfills overflowing, plastic gyres swirling in our oceans, and microplastics infiltrating the air, water, and our bodies, we need collective action, innovation, and collaboration.
Our hands-on approach ensures that Partners don’t just talk about solutions — they implement them. Being part of the Pact means committing to action and accountability. It’s about showing up to collaboratively create change, leveraging and learning from each partner’s strengths, and measuring progress transparently.
Can you share a success story where collaboration within the CPP led to measurable impact for reducing plastic waste?
When I joined the CPP in early 2023, the organization was starting to lay the foundational groundwork needed to build momentum. With several valuable tools and guides developed, there was also a growing need to deliver tangible, on-the-ground impact. To address this, we launched our Accelerators, starting with a focus on Reuse in early 2024.
This initiative identified existing reuse and refill solutions and brought together companies, investors, and government funding to scale them.
Partially funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada, this initiative invested in EcoTank Canada and Canadian Tire Corporation (CTC) to expand bulk windshield washer dispensers across Ontario and Québec, and in Friendlier to scale reusable packaging at post-secondary education campuses in Ontario and British Columbia.
CTC and EcoTank’s source reduction initiative aims to significantly reduce the use of single-use windshield washer fluid jugs, which previously accounted for over 6 million units of plastic annually, or 800,000 kg of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic.
Every jug avoided through these dispensers not only reduces plastic waste but also extends producer responsibility (EPR) fees, giving companies more incentive to cut plastic use and switch to reusable systems where it makes sense. With the support of CPP’s Reuse Accelerator, CTC added another 20+ dispensers to Canadian Tire Gas+ gas bars in Ontario and Québec in 2024.
Meanwhile, Friendlier’s efforts to scale reusable packaging have already diverted more than 142,000 kg of plastic waste through the reuse of over 2.4 million food packages. They set out to convert 50% of southern Ontario campuses, but with the desire for reuse in other provinces, their scope has extended Canada-wide, with a goal to convert 10 additional campuses and to increase product offerings at locations where Friendlier is already operating.
How does the CPP align with global strategies for circularity in plastics?
The CPP is an active participant in the Plastics Pact Network, convened by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the Waste and Resource Action Programme (WRAP). We are among 13 Plastics Pacts, which unite over 900 businesses, governments, and organizations to drive regional efforts to tackle plastic waste and pollution. The latest data from 2022 shows that the combined efforts of this network have prevented the use of over 2.2 million tonnes of virgin plastic, with some Pact countries tripling recycled content rates in plastic packaging.
Like every Pact, we have worked alongside our Partners to establish a national roadmap toward a circular economy for plastics. This includes providing knowledge and guidance, piloting and scaling innovative solutions to ensure the right plastics stay in the economy and all plastics stay out of people, animals, and nature.
While we’ve made significant strides within our region, tackling this global challenge requires collaboration across borders. Given our proximity to and close economic ties with the United States, we maintain strong alignment with the U.S. Plastics Pact. Looking ahead, we are planning to work with the U.S. Plastics Pact on initiatives focused on the elimination of unnecessary and problematic plastics to drive greater impact at scale in the North American market.
We have also worked with the Consumer Goods Forum’s Plastic Waste Coalition of Action on implementing a Canadianized version of the Golden Design Rules for Plastic Packaging.
Each Pact works to break down silos in their own regions and then brings the learnings to the network to advance our shared vision. Given the effectiveness of the Plastic Pact Network, we also see ourselves as being instrumental in the execution of the Global Plastics Treaty — an international agreement to address plastic pollution — once finalized.
What is the biggest challenge to working with a diversity of stakeholders across the entire plastics value chain?
The biggest challenge is aligning the many different priorities, perspectives, and goals. While we share a common purpose and vision, creating a circular economy for plastics doesn’t have a silver bullet solution. Everyone — from producers and manufacturers to retailers, policymakers, and recyclers — views the issues through their own lens.
But this challenge is also our greatest asset. Breaking down silos enables us to bring together these diverse viewpoints to experiment with and develop innovative solutions that no single company or organization could identify, tackle, or scale on its own.
The CPP works to find common ground while respecting the unique roles each stakeholder plays. By working collaboratively, we can address the complex issues and the tensions that exist while minimizing the unintended consequences so that the work we’re doing is practical and has a lasting positive impact.
What are your key priorities and focus areas over the next ten years?
From the outset, we understood that reaching the ambitious goals would require large-scale collaboration and innovation. Working toward the targets set by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has provided us with deeper insights into what it will take to achieve them in a Canadian context.
At the heart of this effort is the need for a shared vision for Canada — a unified path toward a circular economy for plastics. This involves collaboratively setting the agenda and aligning on design principles so that we are reducing virgin plastic, eliminating unnecessary and problematic plastics, scaling reuse/refill systems, innovating the plastics we do need to be recyclable, and increasing the use of post-consumer recycled content.
The next phase of our journey — our Roadmap to 2035 — is the product of a major collaborative effort from across our Partnership. This evolving document, to be launched in 2025, charts Canada’s path to a circular economy for plastic packaging and outlines the critical role CPP will play in driving this transition.
Will we be able to say in the next decade that we’ve eliminated all plastic waste and pollution in Canada? Likely not. What we do know is that we have a clear vision and a committed group of Partners focused on advancing solutions that will keep the right plastics in the economy and all plastics out of people, animals, and nature.
We know this because the achievements we have made so far would not have been possible without the Pact’s unprecedented collaborative effort to rethink how we use, design, and recover plastics. In other words, we are not just talking about what needs to be done, we are making it happen. We hope you will join us in shaping the future of plastics in Canada.
This story was featured in the Circular Economy Magazine:
