The US Plastics Pact has updated its plan for companies to minimise plastic waste with Roadmap 2.0, as the targets remain unmet with only a year until their original deadline.

First announced in 2020, the Pact set 2025 as its target. It covered defining problematic packaging, ensuring that 100% of plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable and compostable, and achieving an average of 30% recycled content or responsibly sourced, bio-based content.

Its signatories, including major corporations such as Coca-Cola, Nestle and Kraft Heinz. now have until 2030 to achieve these goals, described by US Plastics Pact as an “evolution”.

A new goal focuses on the development of reusable packaging, but with no specified numbers. Meanwhile, "problematic and unnecessary items" are set for elimination by 2026.

By the end of 2022, the last year for which data is available, participants’ numbers for hitting 100% reusable, recyclable and compostable packaging remained below 50% from an original baseline of 37%.

Roadmap 2.0 begins on 1 January 2026. Plastic Pact's executive director Emily Tipaldo told the Wall Street Journal: “The targets that were set on the 2025 Roadmap timeline were extremely ambitious. I don’t know that there was frankly anyone out there who thought we were going to meet all of the things. It’s more about lighting a fire under people.”

The US Plastics Pact continues to work as part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's Plastics Pact Network.