Our commitment to Environment and Natural Resources in relation to Sustainable Development Goals 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 against our organisational values.
We’re active advocates for public policy development on resources and waste, researching issues to provide evidenced responses based on our own analysis. While we work closely with and listen to our guarantors, members, partners and stakeholders we arrive at our own conclusions and advance our own arguments. We’re materials agnostic, understanding and promoting the qualities of each material in meeting certain packaging requirements while taking a robust approach to evaluating the recyclability of materials within the UK context. We’re committed to promoting the more efficient use of resources and establishment of a circular economy in packaging materials and will call out perverse policies and positions when we encounter them.
Our world-leading recycling labels have been given the highest rating by the UN Environment Programme. We were the first in the world to provide evidence-led actionable advice for consumers based on national recycling collections and in 2019 extended assessment criteria to the whole recycling infrastructure and markets applying in the UK.
We’re constantly developing new tools and services to reduce the negative environmental and biodiversity impacts of packaging materials production, use and disposal including more sustainable design and engaging citizens in pro-environmental action in reducing, reusing, recycling, enabling recovery and responsible disposal of packaging at end of life. We have set out in our Statement on SDGs 14 and 15 Life Below Water and Life on Land on how we will go about delivering this.
We commission our own research and use our professional knowledge and data to advance evidence-based public policy on resources and waste issues, and the development of infrastructure to establish a circular economy in packaging. We’ll build on this by analysing our climate risks. We research effective ways to engage citizens and promote effective methods and messages with stakeholders throughout the sector and with government. Now we’re offering our expertise to reach out to our suppliers to help them reduce their environmental footprint and to take collaborative action through developing a Supplier Code.
We recognise the Climate Emergency and the need for urgent and radical action and have set out our commitments in our Climate Emergency Statement. It includes formal declarations on how we’ll support our members so that their packaging is transformed to deliver the Paris Agreement. We’ve put in place a Carbon Policy and are committed to reducing our emissions, working with our landlord, our staff and our suppliers. We’re offsetting our travel-related emissions and will work toward Net Zero emissions over the next few years. We’re working to minimise our resource and water usage and waste by careful procurement, reducing, reusing and recycling.
Our services help our members design and procure more sustainable packaging and engage their customers in recycling and other pro-environmental behaviours, striving to minimise habitat and biodiversity loss, pollution of our oceans and waterways, and GHG emissions through landfilling or irresponsible disposal.
