This week saw a landmark in the UK’s war on plastic – one many believed would never happen. Nine of the UK’s major retailers signed a joint “statement of intent” to revolutionise the way stores use plastic.

In the new pledge, the ‘UK Plastics Pact Grocery members’ – Aldi, Asda, Co-op, Lidl, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose – have vowed to work together to create a reuse model to recolonise the way Brits shop.

We’re not talking about a few token refill machines here, but large swathes of fmcg switching to an entirely new model of reusable packaging. Within the next five years.

Recent history is littered with the failures of joint schemes, with retailers pulling out of pacts, and giving up the ghost on their various trial stores and closed loop experiments.

Yet in a major recapturing of momentum, retailers – backed by Wrap and Defra – have committed to work together and, crucially, bring the scale needed to shift the dial on plastic.

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They are buoyed by a recent survey revealed by The Grocer which showed that, if retailers switched to a 30% reuse model, supermarkets could save tens of millions on EPR fees every year and slash carbon emissions.

However, there is a massive elephant in the room. Where are the big suppliers and how do they stand in all this? As Wrap goes about trying to draw up plans to formalise targets on an industry Plastics Pact Mark II, the dust is still settling on a shock walkout by fmcg titans including Nestlé, Mars and Mondelez from the US equivalent. And Walmart.

This came as the US, just like the UK is doing now, sought to draw up a framework for the next phase of its work, with more stretching 2030 goals, including a move to a reuse model.

The departure of such high-profile companies represents a hammer blow to the pact’s work in the US.

Will UK suppliers follow retailers in setting out their stall on plastic? Or, faced with the huge costs and challenging targets presented by the environmental goals and systematic change being called for, will they take a leaf out of the US book and walk away from the negotiation table?

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