Schneider Electric joins 66 signatories of European Plastics Pact

22 / 03 / 2020

By Marwa Nassar - -

Schneider Electric, the leader in digital transformation of energy management and automation, has inked the European Plastics Pact which is signed by 15 EU governments and 66 companies and organizations.

This Pact is meant to connect 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.

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.

Schneider Electric efforts on plastics circulation:

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.

Within this context, the company has manufactured 96% of cardboards and pallets for transport packing from recycled or certified sources, with this percentage expected to hit 100 percent by the end of 2020.

Schneider Electric is commitment to double the quantity of recycled plastics, post-industrial (external) and post-consumer in its products by 2025 (from the worldwide baseline of 2017); 22% of target was achieved by end 2019.

The company is also working in close collaboration with its packaging suppliers and seeks to create internal knowledge repository for inspiration and best practice sharing on greener and circular materials for plastics and packaging.

The company’s future plans:

The company is committed to go even further in that direction, with new targets and actions planned for the coming years.

The company seeks to move away from single use plastics in employees’ day-to-day activities; move towards 100% sustainable packaging including primary (product) packaging with actions to use recycled/certified materials; launch suitable pilot projects as proof-of-concept; deploy a ‘Sustainable Packaging Guideline’ to achieve Schneider Electric’s sustainable packaging targets.

The company’s efforts, in adopting circularity as a key pillar of its strategy, have gained recognition when it 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.