NEW KENSINGTON, PA – Yerecic Label joined the U.S. Plastics Pact, a collaborative, solutions-driven initiative to move towards a circular economy for plastics. The initiative is rooted in four ambitious goals intended to drive significant systems change by unifying diverse cross-sector approaches, setting a national strategy, and creating scalable solutions to create a path forward in the United States by 2025.
As an Activator of the U.S. Plastics Pact, Yerecic Label has agreed to collectively deliver against these four ambitious goals:
- Define a list of packaging to be designated as problematic or unnecessary by 2021 and take measures to eliminate them by 2025.
- 100% of plastic packaging will be reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025.
- Undertake ambitious actions to effectively recycle or compost 50% of plastic packaging by 2025.
- Achieve an average of 30% recycled content or responsibly sourced, biobased content by 2025.
“Yerecic Label is tremendously proud of our team’s continuous commitment to sustainability, most recently demonstrated by our decision to become an Activator of the U.S. Plastics Pact.” Says Elizabeth Yerecic, Director of Business Development & Sustainability at Yerecic Label. “We are thrilled for this opportunity to be a voice for sustainable pressure sensitive labeling, specifically in fresh food applications.”
The first North American Pact of its kind, the U.S. Pact is a consortium led by The Recycling Partnership and World Wildlife Fund (WWF), as part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Plastics Pact Network.
While the U.S. Pact is complementary to and follows the ambitious precedents set by the existing global network of Plastic Pacts, it will be tailored to meet the unique needs and challenges of the U.S. market. The Pact will reflect national priorities and realities, while still propelling the nation closer to other developed nations in its management of plastic waste.
“Together through the U.S. Plastics Pact, we will ignite system change to accelerate progress toward a circular economy,” says Emily Tipaldo, Executive Director of the U.S. Plastics Pact. “The U.S. Pact will mobilize system-wide change through support for upstream innovation and a coordinated national strategy. This unified framework will enable members to fast-track progress toward our ambitious 2025 sustainability goals. Members’ full participation will be vital to reaching our shared goals.”
Yerecic Label is committed to transparent, annual reporting, guided by WWF’s ReSource: Plastic Footprint Tracker, which will be used to document annual progress against our four goals. In June 2021, the U.S. Plastics Pact established a “Roadmap to 2025” which identifies key milestones and national solutions to achieving the U.S. targets and realize a circular economy in which plastic never becomes waste.
Here at Yerecic Label we have always believed that success goes hand in hand with environmental responsibility. Every day we strive to reduce our environmental footprint and joining the U.S. Plastics Pact is the next step in that journey. To learn more about our efforts, check out our Sustainability Page!
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About Yerecic Label
For over 50 years, Yerecic Label has served the fresh food and retail industries with on-pack label solutions that connect with shoppers. Yerecic Label’s dual focus on consumer research and lean manufacturing creates high-impact labels to help entice, inform and inspire shoppers while serving you at the Speed of Fresh®. Yerecic Label is a label manufacturer for the fresh industries located in New Kensington, PA in a facility designed for cellular lean manufacturing. To learn more, visit YLfresh.com
About The Recycling Partnership
The Recycling Partnership is a national nonprofit organization that leverages corporate partner funding to transform recycling for good in states, cities, and communities nationwide. As the leading organization in the country that engages the full recycling supply chain from the corporations that manufacture products and packaging to local governments charged with recycling to industry end markets, haulers, material recovery facilities, and converters, The Recycling Partnership positively impacts recycling at every step in the process. Since 2014, the nonprofit change agent diverted 230 million pounds of new recyclables from landfills, saved 465 million gallons of water, avoided more than 250,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases, and drove significant reductions in targeted contamination rates. Learn more at www.recyclingpartnership.org
About World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
WWF is one of the world’s leading conservation organizations, working in nearly 100 countries for over half a century to help people and nature thrive. With the support of more than 5 million members worldwide, WWF is dedicated to delivering science-based solutions to preserve the diversity and abundance of life on Earth, halt the degradation of the environment and combat the climate crisis. Visit www.worldwildlife.org to learn more and keep up with the latest sustainability news by following @WWFBetterBiz on Twitter and signing up for our newsletter and news alerts here.
About The Ellen MacArthur Foundation
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation was launched in 2010 with the aim of accelerating the transition to the circular economy. Since its creation, the charity has emerged as a global thought leader, putting the circular economy on the agenda of decision-makers around the world. The charity’s work focuses on seven key areas: insight and analysis; business; institutions, governments, and cities; systemic initiatives; circular design; learning; and communications
Further information: www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org | @circulareconomy
About The New Plastics Economy and The Plastics Pact
Since 2016, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative has rallied businesses and governments behind a positive vision of a circular economy for plastic. Its 2016 and 2017 New Plastics Economy reports captured worldwide headlines, revealing the financial and environmental costs of waste plastic and pollution.
The Plastics Pact is a global network of initiatives that brings together all key stakeholders at the national or regional level behind a common vision with a concrete set of ambitious local targets. It builds a unique platform to exchange learnings and best practices across regions to accelerate the transition to a circular economy for plastic – a New Plastics Economy – in which it never becomes waste or pollution.
Further information: www.newplasticseconomy.org | @circulareconomy
