
The Evolution of ReSource and Transparent 2024: Closing the Gap between Ambition and Impact
- Date: 30 January 2025
- Author: Erin Simon, Vice President and Head, Plastic Waste and Business
Leading companies know that addressing plastic pollution is important for their business continuity, resilience, and license to operate, and it's also the right thing to do. Companies are in many different places on their sustainability journey, and need support on how to act, advocate, and invest towards meaningful, measurable impact.
Annual reporting through ReSource: Plastic, as outlined in this year’s Transparent report, has helped inform many companies’ mitigation strategies, raised their level of ambition, and pushed companies to improve their data collection processes and disclose more accurately and comprehensively.
The major takeaways from the past five years of ReSource: Plastic reporting include:
- Transparent reporting drives corporate action on plastic waste.
- Through ReSource, Members have raised their level of ambition and improved data collection. To drive widespread industry action, we need harmonized reporting at scale.
- Voluntary corporate action is necessary, but not sufficient to address the scale and urgency of the plastic pollution crisis.
- Policy action is needed – including national extended producer responsibility (EPR) frameworks and a strong legally binding global treaty – to level the playing field and drive the broader systems change that companies can't undertake on their own.
- Companies need to collaborate, advocate, and invest beyond their own operations.
- Solutions like scaling reuse, improving collection and recycling infrastructure, and reducing leakage in high-risk geographies will require stakeholders across the plastic value chain to come together to drive systems change.
These takeaways illustrate the need to create a broader community of practice of companies that are ready and willing to collaborate for systems change, alongside governments and civil society. Companies need to translate plastic commitments into action, by looking at their plastic waste lifecycle journey and exploring where in the wider circular materials system they can make the most impact. This is why we’re expanding ReSource beyond data collection and reporting to focus more on collective impact and help companies close the “how” gap.
We also know that the case for investment in tackling plastic pollution has never been clearer. Just as CFCs posed an urgent risk to life on Earth, emerging research shows the impact of plastic-related chemicals is a red flag for human health. The EPA estimates that an investment of $36.5 to $43.4 billion would be needed to improve curbside collection, drop-off, and processing infrastructure across the United States by 2030. The more coordinated the approach to plastic pollution is, the higher the return on investment for all stakeholders.
I’m more encouraged than ever that we have what it takes—especially here in the United States with the progress we’ve seen on state-level EPR—to lead on tackling plastic pollution. Because it will take all of us to close the gap and build a future that keeps plastic out of nature.