Fifty-five founding organisations join UK Packaging Pact ahead of April 2026 launch

• Recruitment in full swing - fifty-five founding organisations confirmed for UK Packaging Pact launch including Arla, ASDA, Biffa, GoUnpackaged, Haleon, Lidl, Ocado Retail, PackUK, SUEZ, Tesco, Veolia and Yeo Valley.
• Launching April 2026 - UK Packaging Pact unites business, governments and innovators to deliver changes across all packaging to reduce waste.
• Scope widens to all packaging from pet food to beauty care and all packaging materials.

Ahead of the official launch of the UK Packaging Pact in April 2026, WRAP today announces the names of the fifty-five founding organisations who’ve already signed up to the ten-year Pact to bring sweeping changes across all packaging materials. 

Supported by PackUK, UK Government, and led by global environmental action NGO WRAP, the UK Packaging Pact will transform how we design, use, and recover packaging to reduce waste and emissions, better protect nature and put citizens needs at the heart of packaging decisions. 

The successor to the UK Plastics Pact, the new voluntary agreement widens the focus to all materials commonly used in packaging, and the range of sectors involved in the new programme. Now organisations producing products from food and drink, beauty care, pet products and household goods can join and transform packaging to optimise its use, expand reusability and fully integrate packaging into the circular economy.

Catherine David, CEO, WRAP, “Collaboration works and it’s delivering real change. Unrecyclable black plastic is gone, recycling is rising, and unnecessary packaging is disappearing. But the scale of the challenge demands more. Plastic pollution remains a global crisis, and with the failure to secure a global treaty, the need for bold, systemic action has never been greater. We must accelerate the step change to circular living, driving reuse, tackling plastic film, and enabling the impact of upcoming recycling reforms. This is collective action at its most ambitious and essential, and WRAP is proud to lead the charge toward a truly circular future.”

Ahead of its 2026 launch, fifty-five founding members have signed up including household names such as ASDA, Arla, Haleon, Lidl, Ocado Retail, Tesco, and Yeo Valley, sustainability pioneers GoUnpackaged and PackUK, and major waste management companies Biffa, SUEZ Recycling Recovery UK Ltd and Veolia.

Mary Creagh, Circular Economy Minister, “Government and businesses must ensure packaging is used time and time again. Our new extended producer responsibility scheme will turbocharge this shift to more sustainable packaging. I pay tribute to the 55 world-leading companies who have signed up to the UK Packaging Pact and pledged to go further and faster in delivering greener packaging.”

Jeremy Blake, PackUK Chief Executive Officer, “PackUK is pleased to support the UK Packaging Pact. This ambitious initiative represents the collaborative approach we need to drive real, lasting change. No single organisation can solve the packaging challenge alone - but by pooling expertise and insights across industry and government, we can break down the barriers and accelerate the shift to truly circular packaging at scale. 

We are committed to this journey to transform the UK's relationship with packaging. Together with WRAP and our fellow signatories, we can deliver better packaging for people and planet."

With its whole value chain approach, the UK Packaging Pact will bring together academics, SMEs, innovators, leading retailers, FMCG brands, and recyclers for a whole system approach to revolutionise packaging in the UK and influence global markets. WRAP is in talks with many major brands, retailers and manufacturers across multiple sectors ahead of April. 

The new UK Packaging Pact builds on the success of the UK Plastics Pact, launched by WRAP in 2018 and which is nearing its end. The UK Packaging Pact will go beyond just plastics and food and drink packaging to address all packaging materials, accelerating the UK’s transition to a circular economy through four ambitious, interconnected goals, to 

• Optimise packaging
• Scale reuse and refill
• Support circular infrastructure investment, and
• Harmonise data – to improve traceability for more impactful decision making 

The UK Packaging Pact intends to fill the supermarket of 2035 with products in minimal, efficient packaging designed for reuse and remove single-use packaging from our everyday waste stream. It will usher in more widely used easily recyclable packaging, with reduced carbon. And it will continue to act to eliminate problematic and unnecessary packaging items following the success of The UK Plastics Pact which has acted as a lightning rod for industry. Behind the scenes, harmonised data systems and investment in circular infrastructure will ensure that everything citizens buy is made with the environment in mind and can be recovered and reused, never wasted. 

As major reforms including packaging Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), Simpler Recycling, and Deposit Return Schemes move into implementation, the UK Packaging Pact will assist businesses and serve as a test-bed for implementation and a feedback mechanism for future regulation. 

Following the sustainable model

Since 2018, the UK Plastics Pact has achieved market-wide transformation through voluntary action. Despite global disruption and policy delays, businesses stepped up and acted ahead of regulation. The UK Packaging Pact will continue and broaden this momentum, addressing unfinished plastics targets while expanding collaboration across all packaging material streams. It will tackle persistent challenges from flexible plastics to scaling reuse, and under-investment in infrastructure by convening business, government, and investors around shared solutions.

The latest UK Plastics Pact progress report is released today showing:

TARGET 1:

• 99.9% of problematic plastics eliminated.
• 80% of polystyrene and PVC removed to make recycling easier and reduce processing costs.
• 726 million problematic items removed nine months before bans.
• 36,000 tonnes of hard-to-recycle packaging phased out early, saving £6.2 million in pEPR fees.

TARGET 2:

• 70% of plastic food packaging now reusable, recyclable, or compostable.

TARGET 3:

• Plastic recycling rate up to 53%.

TARGET 4:

• Recycled content tripled from 8.5% to 28%.

The UK Plastics Pact became the blueprint for 13 global Plastics Pacts now operating across 19 countries in the Global North and South.