WWF Launches Platform for Sustainable Materials Management

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has launched the Cascading Materials Vision, a platform that seeks to enable a global system of efficient materials management, creating markets that better the reuse of materials to reduce waste.

The Cascading Materials Vision convenes the industry and other stakeholders to help every business and industry source secondary materials to protect their profits, the environment and the future wealth of natural resources.

“We can quite literally do more with less simply by using materials more than once. With clear interest and willingness from the industry to embrace this concept, WWF saw an incredible and imperative need to act,” said WWF Deputy Director of Packaging and Material Science Erin Simon in a statement. “By bringing stakeholders together onto one cohesive platform, the Cascading Materials Vision will help reduce the burden on our natural systems and enable creation of the global markets needed to make quality secondary materials accessible and reliable.”

In addition, the Cascading Materials Vision strives to engage stakeholders across both private and public sectors to minimize such barriers. Businesses and organizations that have already signed on include the American Chemistry Council, AMERIPEN, Ball Corporation, The Coca-Cola Company, DuPont, European Bioplastic Association, Keurig Green Mountain, Inc., The Materials Leadership Council, McCormick, McDonald’s, Nestlé, Ocean Conservancy, Pathway21, The Recycling Partnership, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. and Target.

These businesses and organizations have agreed to abide by a set of guiding principles for decision-making that align materials management practices, allowing for greater collaboration across the industry and create easier sourcing of secondary materials. These principles range from systems thinking to evaluating environmental impact to implementing solutions that work for today but can adapt to the future. By aligning with stakeholders and collaborators, WWF hopes to use this framework to influence relevant sectors toward achievable, sustainable and inclusive solutions that address the systemic issues that prevent creation, trade and use of secondary materials.

“We are inspired by the number of companies that have already spoken up about the need for a global market of secondary materials,” said Simon in a statement. “With some of the world’s largest and leading companies already committed to the Cascading Materials Vision, we’re confident that this platform will create the catalyst needed to jumpstart the secondary materials market, protect our natural resources and meet the production demands of our growing population.”