In the industry sector, circularity primarily means more services, modernization, an extension of lifespan, 2nd life, as-a-service & leasing offers and product end-of-life management. Another key axis of circularity is greener and more sustainable materials.
This Pact, bringing together, at the time of its launch, 15 EU governments and 66 companies and organisations, aims at connecting stakeholders across borders to coordinate initiatives and work together towards goals aimed at plastics’ design, responsible use, recycling capacity and the use of recycled content.
Schneider Electric’s actions on plastics are one of the key axes of its circular economy strategy and the company has already taken concrete actions towards the goals of the Pact. For example:
- 96% of cardboards and pallets for transport packing are already from recycled or certified sources; end 2020 target is 100%;
- Commitment to double the quantity of recycled plastics, post-industrial (external) and post-consumer in our products by 2025 (from the worldwide baseline of 2017); 22% of target was achieved by end 2019;
- Working in close collaboration with our packaging suppliers;
- Creation of internal knowledge repository for inspiration and best practice sharing on greener and circular materials for plastics and packaging.
And the company is committed to go even further in that direction, with new targets and actions planned for the coming years:
- Moving away from single use plastics in employees’ day-to-day activities;
- Moving towards 100% sustainable packaging including primary (product) packaging with actions to move to recycled/certified materials, remove single use plastics etc;
- Launching suitable pilot projects as proof-of-concept;
- Deploying a 'Sustainable Packaging Guideline' to achieve Schneider Electric's sustainable packaging targets.
The signature of the European Plastics Pact by Schneider Electric is in continuity with the similar engagements already taken on circularity in plastics, such as the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment led by the Ellen McArthur Foundation as well as the French Ministry of Environment.
The company’s efforts, in adopting circularity as a key pillar of its strategy, have gained recognition when we won the world’s premier circular economy award, The Circulars, in 2019 (in the Multinational category), as well as coming in at #9 of Fortune’s magazine’s 2019 change-the-world list of companies.