Revamping recycling: Amcor partners on Argentinian waste infrastructure, joins Alliance to End Plastic Waste
11 Mar 2021 --- In circular economy strides, Amcor is partnering with non-profit McKinsey.org on its Rethinking Recycling program in Argentina. The initiative is entering the second phase of a city-wide recycling plan to improve urban waste management and recycling infrastructure around Buenos Aires.
Amcor has also joined the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW) at executive committee level. Both moves align with Amcor’s 2025 Sustainability Pledge to make 100 percent of its products recyclable or reusable within the next four years.
“Significant government investment will be required to establish global recycling infrastructure,” David Clark, Amcor’s vice president of sustainability, tells PackagingInsights, commenting on Rethinking Recycling.
“Amcor is ready to work alongside governments and lend our expertise in delivering the solutions or policies that are needed.”
Olavarría proved to be one of the most advanced cities in sustainability issues, says Clark.The project in Buenos Aires
To assist the Rethinking Recycling project, Amcor is leveraging its customer network to expand support for the initiative from leading consumer packaged goods companies.
“Amcor introduced Rethinking Recycling to Ecoplas, a professional technical entity specialized in plastics and the environment of which Amcor is part of the board, to help the Rethinking Recycling team with knowledge, training & legislative updates,” Clark explains.
Founded in 2018, Rethinking Recycling aims to develop scalable models that transform how communities manage their waste, targeting households and businesses.
The program works with cities to build community programs that maximize recycling, while improving working conditions in waste management to support long-term jobs and economic growth.
Choosing the pilot city
In Argentina, Rethinking Recycling started with a successful pilot project in Buenos Aires’ Barrio 31 and has now been scaled up in Olavarría, a larger city in Buenos Aires province.
“McKinsey.org and Amcor were keen to find a city that could provide a suitable testing ground for a scaled-up initiative and could provide learnings that could be deployed to other cities in the region,” Clark details.
“Olavarría proved to be one of the most advanced cities in sustainability issues, not only because of the activities that the municipality was already developing but also because of the community’s interest in the subject.”
With about 110,000 inhabitants, Olavarría is a mid-sized town representative of over 30 percent of cities in Argentina.
This made it an ideal size to test behavior change initiatives while simultaneously providing enough scale for a sustainable business case, for example, enough mass of recyclable materials for a sorting plant.
The three-year project aims to fully roll out a recycling program across the entire city. Beginning this year, it will launch a series of pilots to test and improve recycling in the community, before expanding in 2022 and 2023.
The McKinsey.org GIRO team, based in Olavarría and leading the Rethinking Recycling project.“By creating a blueprint for sustainable recycling systems, Amcor and McKinsey.org hope to work together to scale up the strategy throughout Latin America,” Clark maintains.
Joining the AEPW
Meanwhile, Amcor has announced plans to join the AEPW, whose 57 members agree to support, through positive action, projects to build and scale solutions to end plastic waste in the environment.
According to Jacob Duer, AEPW’s CEO, the addition of Amcor strengthens the alliance’s links to the packaging industry.
“Amcor’s expertise will bring new capabilities to the alliance’s project portfolio and brings us closer toward achieving our vision of ending plastic waste in the environment,” says Duer.
Ron Delia, Amcor CEO adds: “Keeping waste out of the environment requires collaboration across the global value chain for better waste management and recycling infrastructure, and educating consumers.”
“The alliance serves as a crucial forum for that collaborative effort across parties aligned on the need to deliver more sustainable outcomes.”
AEPW’s four strategic pillars are waste management infrastructure; innovation; education and engagement; and cleaning up. The Rethinking Recycling project in Buenos Aires targets the first pillar.
Amcor is also a member of the World Wildlife Fund-led activation hub, ReSource: Plastic, and has global partnerships with Ocean Conservancy and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative.
By Anni Schleicher
