London Danone, Nestlé, Tetra Pak and waste management firm Veolia have launched an initiative to provide companies with market-based tools to tackle plastic pollution.
The 3R Initiative was launched in a dedicated session at the Responsible Business Summit in London this week.
It’s is the first global effort to provide companies with market-based tools to tackle plastic pollution at scale – both within and beyond value chains, it says.
The initiative says that independent and universally-recognised standards will “credibly quantify the impacts of companies’ efforts towards waste recovery and recycling”.
In addition, it says an innovative market instrument enables financing of projects that increase plastic waste recovery and recycling across the globe via a crediting mechanism.
The 3R Initiative will establish new standards and an innovative market mechanism for scaling up waste collection and recycling to keep plastic and other waste from polluting the environment and world’s oceans.
This offers companies a “transparent component” to go beyond internal actions and support projects in plastic leakage hotspots that generate verifiable environmental and social benefits.
Credits can be acquired by companies looking to mitigate the portion of their waste footprint that cannot be tackled directly. In turn, waste recovery and recycling projects can use the revenues from credit sales to support and expand their efforts.
“There is a burgeoning movement towards increasing plastic recovery and recycling rates worldwide,” The 3R Initiative says.
“Consumer goods companies in particular are facing intense pressure to reduce the environmental impact of their products and packaging.
“The 3R Initiative will establish new standards and an innovative market mechanism for scaling up waste collection and recycling to keep plastic and other waste from polluting the environment and world’s oceans.”
The 3R Initiative will start by focusing on plastics, and over time expand to cover a wider range of recyclable materials based on environmental and market needs, it says.
The 3R Initiative has Danone, Nestlé, Tetra Pak and Veolia as founding members and is led by international standard-setter Verra and environmental market developer BVRio, both non-profit organisations.
