Closing the loop: Driving circularity and collaboration in UK packaging

It’s a new era for packaging – an era of refill and reuse. Or, at least, this is what WRAP, the organisation behind the UK Packaging Pact is aiming for. The initiative aims to build on the foundations laid by the UK Plastics Pact, which has helped remove 33 billion problematic plastic items, reduced total packaging on the market by 7%, and boosted the recyclability of rigid plastic packaging.

The UK Packaging Pack aims to go further, driving systemic change that aligns more closely with the waste hierarchy, prioritising material reduction and scaling reuse schemes. But how realistic is this goal and, crucially, how can businesses work together to meet it? Events like Packaging Innovations & Empack provide a vital forum for industry leaders to share insights, explore practical solutions, and collaborate on the innovations needed to make this vision a reality.

For Sebastian Munden, Chair of WRAP, the success of the UK Plastics Pact only represents a job half finished. “The original pact helped unlock collaboration between the food and waste management industries,” he told Packaging Innovations & Empack. “What a different world we were in when it launched in 2018. WRAP has gone on to establish 13 Plastic Pacts globally. The UK was the first one, and it set some audacious goals based on the collaboration between the food management, the supermarkets, the food industry, and the waste management industry to create a step change in the approach to plastic packaging.

“But now we’re entering the next phase – scaling up reuse, cutting complexity and ensuring infrastructure keeps pace.”

Paula Chin, Senior Policy Adviser (Consumption) at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), agrees but says there is a strong consumer desire for further change. “Plastics are still a visceral subject,” she says. “Even now, I get WhatsApp messages from local environmental groups about incineration and recycling gaps. The public hasn’t lost interest; they’re frustrated by the pace of systemic change.”

While the UK’s Plastic Packaging Tax, introduced in 2021, was meant to accelerate progress, Chin argues that it “hasn’t yet delivered the behavioural change we need.” WWF’s own data shows recycled content averaging just 26% across major retailers. “Producers are still finding it cheaper to pay the tax than invest in recycled inputs,” she adds.

If 2018’s initiative was about kick-starting progress, 2025 is about scaling it. Cath Conway, Director of Go Unpackaged, outlines the emerging economics behind reuse. “The perception has always been that single-use is cheap and reuse is expensive,” she says. “But at scale, the reverse can be true. Our data shows that three out of four reusable systems can run 10–20% cheaper than single-use, with a 95% reduction in emissions and material use.”

Her research found that online grocery delivery offers the most cost-effective model: “Vans are already returning empty, so there’s no additional logistics cost,” she explains. Even curbside collection could outperform single-use if efficiently managed. “Yes, reusable packaging costs more upfront, but if you get five or ten rotations, that’s ten single-use packs you’re not buying.”

For retailers, the economics are becoming clearer. And James Bull, Head of Packaging and Food Waste Strategy, believes this will incentivise the industry to collaborate to find breakthroughs. “With pEPR [Extended Producer Responsibility] invoices landing this year, businesses can see the cost of single-use,” says Bull. “Every reuse cycle means one less bill, so the case grows stronger over time.”

“Black plastic once felt impossible. We cracked that by working together. The same will be true for reuse, but we need the recycling industry and policy framework to support it.”

This is not to say the transition will be without challenges. There is more to scaling reuse than simply switching formats; this is just one part of a more holistic strategy.

Stuart Hayward-Higham, Chief Technical Development and Innovation Officer at SUEZ, describes the complexity of transitioning an entire infrastructure. “It’s not just about the end goal, it’s about the journey – the chicken-and-egg problem of needing wash plants before there’s enough volume, and vice versa,” he says. “That requires confidence, long-term policy, and trust between all players.

“Investment needs confidence. You can’t build a wash plant if you don’t know the policy will stay consistent or the feedstock will arrive. And we must stop underestimating citizens as consumer behaviour has changed massively in the last decade.”

Newer and higher-quality data, supported by modern digital technology, will be critical, he adds. “We’re still relying on 10- or 15-year-old assumptions about what people will do. The FlexCollect trials (an initiative trialling flexible plastic household collections) proved that households will separate soft plastics if asked, cleanly and consistently.”

The need to collect this data to support the expansion of these reforms adds another layer of complexity. Bull adds, “Everyone defines materials differently,” said Bull. “There’s just not enough uniformity around the data that exists today. Open-source, standardised data would remove so much cost and confusion. At the moment, even the basics – like what’s in a pack, or how much it weighs – aren’t consistent across suppliers.”

Hayward-Higham agrees: “We’ve shifted from measuring in tonnes to tracking by SKU and composition. That’s good, but only if we use the data to drive behaviour, not just to report it.”

Chin highlighted another dimension, transparency. “40% of packaging imported into the UK is of unknown provenance,” she says. “We can’t manage impact if we don’t know where materials come from. Only 13% of the materials reported through the WWF Basket are sustainably sourced on average.”

However, Munden argues that the value of collaborating to overcome these challenges and drive the industry forward is worth it. “For every £1 spent on the UK Plastics Pact, we delivered £5.23 in improvement – including £27 million in savings and 200,000 tonnes of plastic avoided,” he says. “The new UK Packaging Pact will build on that model, tackling all materials and helping industry address the challenges no company can solve alone.”

As the UK Packaging Pact begins to take shape, it is clear that no business can deliver these ambitious circularity goals. But while the challenges are complex, the direction and vision are unmistakable. If the UK Plastics Pact proved what’s possible through collaboration, its successor could set the blueprint for how circular packaging truly works at scale. The UK has an opportunity to redefine what sustainable packaging looks like for the generations to come.

At a time when collaboration has never been more important, events like Packaging Innovations & Empack take on a central role. And you can be at the centre of the conversation by registering for a free ticket to attend 2026’s show at the Birmingham NEC.