Danimer Scientific Helps Launch U.S. Plastics Pact Roadmap to 2025, Driving a National Strategy to Achieve Circular Economy Goals
Danimer Scientific (NYSE: DNMR) has joined The U.S. Plastics Pact's "Roadmap to 2025," aimed at achieving a circular economy for plastics by 2025. The initiative focuses on reducing plastic waste through collaboration among stakeholders. Key targets include making 100% of plastic packaging reusable, recyclable, or compostable, and recycling or composting 50% of plastic packaging by 2025. Danimer's Nodax® material is a key component in this effort, being bio-based and biodegradable. The roadmap will help industry leaders tackle challenges in recycling infrastructure and promote sustainable practices.
- Participation in the U.S. Plastics Pact enhances Danimer's reputation as a leader in sustainability.
- Implementation of the Roadmap aims to achieve significant industry-wide changes by 2025.
- Nodax® material is positioned to meet growing demand for biodegradable packaging solutions.
- The current state of U.S. recycling infrastructure poses challenges that may hinder progress.
- Achieving the 2025 targets requires significant systemic change, with potential delays.
Danimer Scientific (NYSE: DNMR), a leading next generation bioplastics company focused on the development and production of biodegradable materials, today helped launch The U.S. Plastics Pact's (“U.S. Pact”) “Roadmap to 2025,” an aggressive national strategy illustrating how the U.S. Pact, Danimer Scientific and fellow signatories, known as Activators, will seek to achieve each of the U.S. Pact’s four 2025 targets through specific actions, responsibilities, and interim timeframes to realize a circular economy for plastics in the United States by 2025.
Launched in August 2020, The U.S. Plastics Pact is a consortium led by The Recycling Partnership and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) as part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s global Plastics Pact network, which unites a holistic ecosystem of cross-industry stakeholders behind a common vision and national strategy to address plastic waste at its source by 2025.
“Reducing the environmental impact of plastic waste is one of the most critical issues facing the world, and it will take a collaborative, industry-wide effort to achieve success,” said Stephen Croskrey, CEO, Danimer Scientific. “We are proud to work alongside our fellow material developers and packaging manufacturers to fast-track solutions for addressing this crisis.”
As an Activator of the U.S. Pact, Danimer Scientific joins other stakeholders across the plastics value chain in its expectation of achieving systemic change and accelerating progress toward the following 2025 targets by inspiring and supporting upstream innovation through coordinated initiatives such as rethinking products, packaging, and business models in order to transition away from today’s take-make-waste model to a circular economy where plastics never become waste:
- 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. -
By 2025, undertake ambitious actions to effectively recycle or compost
50% of plastic packaging. -
By 2025, the average recycled content or responsibly sourced bio-based content in plastic packaging will be
30% .
Danimer Scientific is currently working with industry partners and customers to develop and supply alternative packaging materials that are bio-based and biodegradable. The company’s signature Nodax® material is a polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA). Nodax® is produced through natural fermentation processes using plant oil from crops such as canola. Nodax® is certified to degrade in a variety of environments at the end of its lifecycle, including industrial composting facilities, backyard compost units, and soil and marine environments.
The U.S. Pact’s Roadmap is designed to kick-start action and help U.S. industry leaders and packaging producers develop a national strategy, advance shared goals, and measure the strength of progress through annual reporting. This national strategy will assist Pact Activators in its expectation of reaching ambitious goals by 2025 that they could not otherwise meet on their own through sharing knowledge, optimizing investments, identifying gaps, overcoming systemic barriers, and implementing policies.
“The current state of U.S. infrastructure, coupled with the lack of incentives to utilize recycled content in plastic packaging, have put immense strain on the value chain,” said Emily Tipaldo, Executive Director, The U.S. Plastics Pact. “The Roadmap is designed to help U.S. industry leaders act on the significant, systemwide change needed to realize a circular economy for plastics by 2025. The timeframe is short, and the workload is immense, but if we choose to do nothing, the visions of a circular economy across the U.S. will give way to the status quo. We look forward to working with all our Activators to drive this critical change.”
The Roadmap holds Danimer Scientific and other Activators of the U.S. Pact accountable to sustainability objectives by creating the pathway in which companies, governments, and NGOs can successfully ensure that plastics remain in the U.S. economy and out of the environment for years to come.
For more information on the U.S. Pact’s full Roadmap, please visit www.usplasticspact.org/roadmap.
About Danimer Scientific
Danimer is a pioneer in creating more sustainable, more natural ways to make plastic products. For more than a decade, its renewable and sustainable biopolymers have helped create plastic products that are biodegradable and compostable and return to nature instead of polluting our lands and waters. Danimer’s technology can be found in a vast array of plastic end products that people use every day. Applications for its biopolymers include additives, aqueous coatings, fibers, filaments, films and injection-molded articles, among others. Danimer now holds more than 150 granted patents and pending patent applications in more than 20 countries for a range of manufacturing processes and biopolymer formulations. For more information, visit www.DanimerScientific.com.
About The Recycling Partnership
The Recycling Partnership is the action agent transforming the U.S. residential recycling system for good. Our team operates at every level of the recycling value chain and works on the ground with thousands of communities to transform underperforming recycling programs and tackle circular economy challenges. As the leading organization in the country that engages the full recycling supply chain, from working with companies to make their packaging more circular and help them meet climate and sustainability goals, to working with government to develop policy solutions to address the systemic needs of the U.S. recycling system, The Recycling Partnership positively impacts recycling at every step in the process. Since 2014, the nonprofit change agent diverted 375 million pounds of new recyclables from landfills, saved 968 million gallons of water, avoided more than 420,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases, and drove significant reductions in targeted contamination rates. Learn more at 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 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’s global Plastics Pact Network
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 Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Plastics Pact Network is a globally aligned response to plastic waste and pollution, which enables vital knowledge sharing and coordinated action. It is a network of national and regional (multi-country) initiatives which brings together key stakeholders to implement solutions towards a circular economy for plastic, tailored to each geography. Each initiative is led by a local organisation and unites businesses, government institutions, NGOs and citizens behind a common vision, with an ambitious set of local targets.
Further information: emf.org/plastics-pact | @circulareconomy
Forward-Looking Statements
Please note that in this press release we may use words such as “appears,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “plans,” “expects,” “intends,” “future,” and similar expressions which constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the expected impact of the restatement of the Company’s financial statements on our 2020 financial results, are made based on our expectations and beliefs concerning future events impacting the Company and therefore involve a number of risks and uncertainties. We caution that forward-looking statements are not guarantees and that actual results could differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Potential risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results of operations or financial condition of the Company to differ materially from those expressed or implied by forward-looking statements in this press release include, but are not limited to, the completion of the audit of the Company’s restated financial statements, the overall level of consumer demand on our products; general economic conditions and other factors affecting consumer confidence, preferences, and behavior; disruption and volatility in the global currency, capital, and credit markets; the financial strength of the Company's customers; the Company's ability to implement its business strategy, including, but not limited to, its ability to expand its production facilities and plants to meet customer demand for its products and the timing thereof; risks relating to the uncertainty of the projected financial information with respect to the Company; the ability of the Company to execute and integrate acquisitions; changes in governmental regulation, legislation or public opinion relating to our products; the Company’s exposure to product liability or product warranty claims and other loss contingencies; disruptions and other impacts to the Company’s business, as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic and government actions and restrictive measures implemented in response; stability of the Company’s manufacturing facilities and suppliers, as well as consumer demand for our products, in light of disease epidemics and health-related concerns such as the COVID-19 global pandemic; the impact that global climate change trends may have on the Company and its suppliers and customers; the Company's ability to protect patents, trademarks and other intellectual property rights; any breaches of, or interruptions in, our information systems; the ability of our information technology systems or information security systems to operate effectively, including as a result of security breaches, viruses, hackers, malware, natural disasters, vendor business interruptions or other causes; our ability to properly maintain, protect, repair or upgrade our information technology systems or information security systems, or problems with our transitioning to upgraded or replacement systems; the impact of adverse publicity about the Company and/or its brands, including without limitation, through social media or in connection with brand damaging events and/or public perception; fluctuations in the price, availability and quality of raw materials and contracted products as well as foreign currency fluctuations; our ability to utilize potential net operating loss carryforwards; and changes in tax laws and liabilities, tariffs, legal, regulatory, political and economic risks. More information on potential factors that could affect the Company's financial results is included from time to time in the Company's public reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and Current Reports on Form 8-K. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are based upon information available to the Company as of the date of this press release, and speak only as of the date hereof. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this press release.
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