The U.S. Plastics Pact is refining how to most effectively support companies as packaging regulations ramp up — an environment that comes with an evolving set of costs and challenges, according to newly appointed Executive Director Crystal Bayliss.
“Our North Star of where we're moving forward with advancing circularity — that is not changing,” said Bayliss, who was named to the top role Monday after serving in an interim capacity. “But as EPR gets implemented, the ways in which we’re needed to help move this forward might shift, because there are certain things that are in place now on a regulatory level that weren't in place a few years ago when we started.”
USPP was founded in 2020 as a collective of brand owners and other plastic packaging value chain stakeholders. Since then, packaging sustainability targets have gone from a nice-to-have to mandatory as seven U.S. states passed extended producer responsibility for packaging laws with implications for plastic packaging design.
Bayliss has held various positions at USPP since 2022 and served as interim executive director since January when former CEO Jonathan Quinn left the organization. “She has earned the trust and respect of USPP’s staff, Activators, and Board through her steady leadership and dedication to helping organizations navigate complexity and move their work forward,” Susan Fife-Ferris, vice chair of the USPP Board of Directors, said in the announcement.
Who is involved?
Participation in the Pact has fluctuated, and USPP does not currently list its participants on its website like it did as recently as a few months ago.
Resources are stretched thin in today’s environment, and companies are focusing on their respective “biggest pain points and the places where they need the solutions the most to be compliant” with regulations, Bayliss said. “That means that some folks have chosen to dig deep into some areas and been involved in fewer initiatives elsewhere, which makes sense given the circumstances.”
Participation in the group doesn’t have to be viewed as indefinite, Bayliss said. “You see companies moving around a little bit in terms of which organizations they’re participating in,” she said.
USPP’s programs will take that into account going forward, making it easier for companies to join for a particular project, for example. And projects will be tangibly oriented to help companies meet their own individual voluntary commitments as well as achieve regulatory compliance, she said. “From that standpoint, I would expect that we would potentially see some former members come back, as well as some new members join.”
“It's just being flexible and evolving with the times,” taking into account companies’ differences in size, structure and focus areas. “I would anticipate this would actually draw more folks in, as opposed to shrinking the pool of the folks that we're working with.”
Whether project participants pay to be involved to help cover expenses would be case by case.
USPP has gotten pushback from a coalition of Republican attorneys general, led by Florida’s James Uthmeier. The AGs said last October that USPP, in addition to the Consumer Goods Forum and GreenBlue, have pushed corporations to align on packaging standards, and demanded the groups show their compliance with state and federal antitrust laws.
Uthmeier followed that up with individual letters earlier this year to participating companies, “notifying them that continued participation in or coordination with the initiatives may expose them to antitrust liability.” In April, he issued civil investigative demands to the three groups, as well as Coca-Cola, Mondelēz, Nestlé, Target and Unilever, with a May 27 deadline to provide documentation addressing specific questions.
Asked about the situation, Bayliss said USPP would be providing further information on how it ensures compliance. Bayliss also noted that activator membership is voluntary and companies make independent decisions. “We are confident that we have followed all of the laws,” Bayliss said. Following antitrust guidelines “is foundational to what we do.”
Bolstering the road map
The organization remains committed to the 2030 road map that it announced in 2024, which calls for reducing virgin plastic use by 30%, and implementing an average of 30% PCR or responsibly sourced, biobased content across all plastic packaging, among other benchmarks.
Still, there’s room to evolve. There are fewer deliverables in the back half of that outline “just because it's really challenging to plan six years at a time, because the world is so rapidly evolving,” Bayliss said. The organization will build in more detail to the road map as it moves into 2027, she said.
As companies progress on their circularity journeys, it’s becoming clearer where solutions are needed most, she explained. “I am excited for the future, because I think the U.S. Plastics Pact is uniquely positioned to support companies with some of the very practical challenges that they’re running into.”
Katie Pyzyk contributed to this story.
