Circle Alliance targets funding to reduce plastic pollution

In June, on the two-year anniversary of the Save Our Seas Initiative, Unilever, USAID and EY launched the Circle Alliance, a new public-private collaboration designed to support entrepreneurs and small businesses across the plastics value chain to scale solutions that reduce plastic use, tackle plastic waste and build circular economies.

The Circle Alliance will be the flagship public-private collaboration under USAID’s Save Our Seas Initiative, a global initiative to combat ocean plastic pollution in support of the landmark Save Our Seas 2.0 Act of 2020.

Using an initial, planned investment of $21 million, the initiative seeks to protect the environment and improve livelihoods by supporting entrepreneurs and small businesses, with a focus on women, who make up the majority of waste collectors in the global south. It will begin by focusing on India, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines, with intentions to expand by bringing in new organizations and additional funds.  

USAID Administrator Samantha Power, Unilever Chief Sustainability Officer Rebecca Marmot and EY Global Vice Chair-Sustainability Amy Brachio announced the initiative with Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Dan Sullivan, the co-sponsors of the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act. 

Circle is supported by USAID’s EDGE Fund, a seed fund designed to leverage the private sector’s expertise in confronting some of the most significant challenges of our time, and by the GEEA Fund, which is committed to the advancement of economic security for women and girls by increasing their access to resources, services and leadership opportunities and by addressing the barriers that limit their ability to participate fully in the economy. The program is part of the U.S. government-led Women in the Sustainable Economy (WISE) Initiative, which aims to bolster women’s economic empowerment globally by expanding access to employment, training, leadership roles and financial resources in the industries critical to the planet's future.

USAID plans to invest an additional $10.9 million in the Clean Cities, Blue Ocean program, USAID’s flagship program under the Save Our Seas Initiative, to bolster the efforts of the Circle Alliance. This funding includes $750,000 from the government of Norway and was previously announced for USAID’s Save Our Seas Initiative at the Our Ocean Conference and on Earth Day.

USAID says its programs have prevented approximately 1.2 million metric tons of plastic from leaking into the environment (the equivalent of 127 billion plastic bottles), improved solid waste services for 11.3 million people and catalyzed $138.7 million of private sector and public funding commitments for solid waste management and recycling.

In a report on Unilever’s website dated Aug. 23, Unilever’s Marmot, says, “Circle’s collaborative model of enterprise acceleration—delivered through a mix of grant funding and bespoke business support—will help scale both new and existing solutions for packaging circularity, whether that’s driving collection and recycling or reuse–refill models.

“Crucially, it will support many small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurs that offer impactful, market-based solutions but are currently too small to work at the scale we need.”

Unilever's investment in Circle includes a cash contribution from the company’s Climate & Nature Fund, an impact-led investment platform through which the company is investing $1.1 billion by 2030.

“We aim to transform the way our products are made and reach end of life by investing in projects that drive systemic change and collaborating with partners and co-financiers to scale solutions,” the company says.

Unilever also is contributing to Circulate Capital’s Ocean Fund to support better investment and infrastructure in South and Southeast Asia, as well as Latin America, where the company says ocean plastic pollution is “particularly acute.”

The global consulting firm Resonance, Burlington, Vermont, is acting as the Circle Alliance implementing partner.

In a blog post on the Resonance website, Lauri Pickard, chief of party for the Circle Alliance, writes that the program addresses a complex, compelling challenge that can’t be solved by one party acting alone but that requires partnerships across the public and private sectors. She also refers to the deep expertise and the strong commitment the founding partners bring to address the problem of plastic pollution.

In addition to producing social and environmental benefits, Pickard says the Circle Alliance’s results can be sustained.

“One of the greatest benefits of working with the private sector on development is that when an intervention works, it can be sustained as a new way of doing business," Pickard says. "In this case, the enterprises that receive funding through the Circle Alliance will continue to contribute to the development of circular technologies and economies, women’s economic empowerment and employment, improved livelihoods and reduction of plastics pollution. Some businesses may also be incorporated into Unilever’s supply chain, providing postconsumer recycled material back to Unilever to reduce the use of virgin plastic. Other businesses will operate refill and reuse models, in which consumers refill the same plastic vessel multiple times, keeping that plastic out of the waste stream.”

Organizations interested in joining the Circle Alliance can contact Pickard at lpickard@resonanceglobal.com.

A similar partnership, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW), was formed in 2019 by companies from the plastics and consumer goods value chain to promote solutions to eliminate plastic waste in the environment, especially in the ocean.

RELATED: Alliance to End Plastic Waste cites ‘significant progress’ in 2023

AEWP, which counts BASF Corp., Berry Global Inc., LyondellBasell, Procter & Gamble, SABIC, Tomra and Total Energies among its members, has committed more than $1 billion to help end plastic waste in the environment by developing and scaling solutions to minimize and manage plastic waste and promote solutions for used plastics by helping to enable a circular economy.