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American Beverage Association

Five Years of Progress: WWF and ABA’s Partnership for Practical Solutions

Overview

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A future with no plastic in nature is within our grasp if everyone, including business, steps up to help fix the broken material system that has led to the global plastic pollution crisis. Creating well-designed circular systems—so that all plastic is collected and remade into new products—is one important part of solving this crisis. And with the vast majority of the country’s plastic going to waste instead of recycling, it's an urgent one. Advancing circular systems is also one of the biggest opportunities for industry leadership.

Since 2019, WWF and the American Beverage Association have partnered to help create a circular economy for plastic.

Bringing together our industry and non-governmental organization leadership, our collaboration is working towards a shared ambition: to ensure that every plastic bottle remains in the loop to become another bottle, moving the world towards less plastic use and no plastic in nature.

Together we are working to help affect systems-level change on plastic waste management in the United States by:

  • Leading advocacy efforts on well-designed extended producer responsibility—widely known as EPR—and other game-changing policy frameworks to support the transition to circular systems,
  • Advancing transparency and alignment on plastic footprint measurement, including embedding metrics aligned to the ReSource Footprint Tracker into the foundation of American Beverage’s Every Bottle Back Program,
  • Building thought leadership to advance holistic circularity solutions in the beverage industry, and
  • Engaging in broader cross-sector collaborations, including OneSource Coalition and the US Plastics Pact.


Our Impact

Advancing EPR: A game-changing policy solution

Today, just 29% of polyethylene terephthalate—or PET—plastic bottles end up recycled in the US. ...

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Today, just 29% of polyethylene terephthalate—or PET—plastic bottles end up recycled in the US. This statistic is largely because most of the country’s recycling is managed and financed by local governments that struggle to handle the costs and logistics of collecting and sorting plastic waste. Nationally, there is a patchwork of programs scattered across 20,000 jurisdictions.

Strong and effective recycling and waste management infrastructure is not only crucial to American Beverage’s Every Bottle Back effort, but it will also lay the groundwork for circularity in the US and globally. Extended Producer Responsibility is a comprehensive policy solution that can be the game-changer for accelerating such transformation to our country’s plastic waste management system.

For this reason, a core goal of our partnership is to advance EPR policy that is based on the essential requirements for an effective and sustainable collection system.

In 2021, WWF and American Beverage published Joint Principles to align our distinct non-governmental organization and industry perspectives into actionable guidance for advancing an EPR framework in the US.

Since WWF and ABA released its joint principles, EPR legislation has been advancing in state legislatures around the country. In 2023, Colorado passed an EPR law aligned with our joint principles to establish a credible system designed to make collection easy for consumers, incentivize best practices for sorting and processing, and pair producer responsibility with access to high quality materials.

In 2024, Minnesota passed the Packaging Waste and Cost Reduction Act, which establishes EPR for plastic and packaging materials in the state. Under the new law, all packaging will be required to be reusable, recyclable, compostable, or collected by an approved alternative collection system by 2032.

WWF and ABA are also engaging in conversations and advocacy for EPR aligned with our principles at the federal level.

Plastic footprint tracking and reporting

Transparency and accountability are indispensable to effective implementation of any ambitious program to reduce plastic waste. ...

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Transparency and accountability are indispensable to effective implementation of any ambitious program to reduce plastic waste.

For its Every Bottle Back initiative, American Beverage reports on metrics consistent with WWF’s innovative ReSource Footprint Tracker as a framework for tracking progress toward the circularity of its plastic bottles. The program’s annual plastic footprint covers four indicators that contribute to beverage industry's plastic footprint and identifies where the beverage industry has made progress to address it.


Additional Resources

Partnership Resources

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