Eunomia found Verra had registered a total of 13 projects under its plastic waste reduction scheme (PWRS), which together have recycled 98,876 tonnes of plastic across countries including Ghana, Thailand, Australia and Iceland. Some 10,146 credits (one credit = one tonne) have been issued but only 228 (2.2%) have been sold. Credits sold under other standards are not shared publicly.
Verra isn’t the only plastic credit standard provider. PCX Solutions, Zero Plastic Oceans, BVRio and the Prevent Waste Alliance are among the others and the details available are sketchy. Those developing projects that can attract credits include Repurpose Global, South Pole, Second Life, Plastics for Charge and Danone, of course.
Buyers include NutriAsia, Century Pacific Food, Nestlé, Coca-Cola Beverages Philippines and Mondelēz International, according to Eunomia’s analysis, with credits attracting from $106 to $1,600, though data is, as Norris knows, limited. “I would be very concerned about cheap plastic credits as this would suggest lower wages and lower integrity schemes,” she adds.
Though carbon and plastic credits have similarities, there are differences worth noting – not least that unlike carbon credits, there is no globally recognised measure or equivalent for a single plastic credit. Given the complex composition of plastics, this means that each tonne of collected plastic will have varying environmental impacts and cannot be considered equal. A tonne of easy to recycle PET bottles is for example a very different processing and profit proposition to the same weight of flexible plastic, often with multiple layers, and which will likely have to be burned or buried following collection.
This issue was picked up in a recent paper by academics in Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the US. Writing for the journal One Earth last month, the experts explained that tonne-to-tonne equivalence was a “fallacy”. Global warming potential (GWP, CO2e) serves as a scientifically accepted metric to equate the climate impacts of physically distinct greenhouse gases, they wrote, adding: “The harmful effects of different plastics cannot be captured by a single global metric.”
Whether credits should fund incineration is therefore moot. In February, Agence France-Presse and SourceMaterial, an investigative reporting platform, revealed that the plastic credits system “relies heavily on cement plants, where large quantities of waste are incinerated, making this industry more polluting than aviation”. The team described how cement kilns are “central to the burgeoning plastic credits sector” with collected plastic used as an “alternative fuel” in a process called co-processing.
Most rigid plastic (74%) was sent for mechanical recycling; whereas more than half the flexibles (56%) went for co-processing under the PARM scheme, a producer responsibility organisation in the Philippines. It is a similar tale in the UK and Europe, where more advanced waste management infrastructure exists: after a period of collecting flexibles at their doors, some UK supermarkets closed their pilots because the mix of food packaging was too hard to sift through and the options for processing were limited to downcycling the plastic into black sacks or incinerating it; only tiny amounts have so far ended up back in food packaging.
Work continues in this area but is far from speedy due in part to strict food safety rules; this leaves food companies that rely on flexible plastic scratching their heads for sustainable solutions. Fibre-based wrapping is an increasingly popular option but comes with its own environmental, technical and financial baggage. “There’s definitely opportunities for [paper-based packaging] but I’m also very aware of the trade-offs,” says Taylor Stanley, corporate impact strategy manager at Canada-based Riverside Natural Foods, which has just trialled paper-based packaging made by Amcor for its MadeGood trail mix bars.
Sustainability leaders in 2025 spend their entire lives assessing trade-offs: and one of them for packaging is the balance between drilling holes for oil versus cutting down trees (even if they are responsibly sourced). There are no easy answers, nor silver bullets – which is why Stanley turned to plastic credits. Riverside Natural Foods has been working closely with Repurpose Global and its global plastic credit protocols. “They’re helping us along on our journey to get out of plastic,” Stanley explains.
The owner of brands including MadeGood, Good to Go and Cookie Pal (treats for dogs) has a target for 100% of its single-serve bars to be in recyclable or compostable packaging by the end of the year – but is currently at 0%, according to its (refreshingly transparent) sustainability report. It has managed 33% for stand-up pouches. Some 733 tonnes of plastic credits have so far been purchased, with 2,135 tonnes of plastic offset since July 2021. The plan, once it has “innovated out of plastic”, is to go back to 2013, when the company was founded, and retroactively offset all the plastic used.
But have no fear – this is money that has to make a difference, with Stanley at pains to explain just how rigorous the Repurpose Global process is. The detail they provide has been coupled with trips to India to see projects on the ground (as well as the vast tonnages of plastic ending up there, here and everywhere). The key is to remove plastic out of nature for treatment – and that plastic must be “low-value, flexible plastic”, which is exactly the type Riverside relies on.
Are the offsets buying the business time to continue using plastic? No way, he says. “If anything, it’s given us a better business case to do the switch to paper sooner.” This is because the costs of the offsets and fees are “baked in” to the costs of the foods sold – and building those externalities into the cost of the plastic packaging brings it much closer to new paper-based options. And that has also eased the path towards regulations like extended producer responsibility for packaging.
Riverside Natural Foods’ report echoes Stanley’s confidence in this particular “self-imposed tax” being ring-fenced to projects that have environmental and social benefits. “We have been fortunate to find a partner who can educate us and confidently report on the real downstream impacts from our investments, while at the same time providing us with third-party verification via their plastic neutral certification.”
