Valuable materials are too often lost to landfills and the environment, especially plastics. In fact, it is estimated that 22 million pounds of plastics enter the Great Lakes every year. Creating a binational Great Lakes circular economy and cleaning up marine litter is one way to close the loop and keep critical materials cycling through the regional economy.

Circular Great Lakes was formed by the Council of the Great Lakes Region in 2021 with a simple goal in mind: bring stakeholders from across different domains and borders together to foster the collective priorities, actions, and investments necessary for realizing a zero-plastic waste future in the region within the next decade.

With support from over 20 key actors from business, government, academia, and the non-profit sector, the Circular Great Lakes initiative, guided by a fact-based gap analysis conducted by RRS for the CGLR, seeks to seed and accelerate the transition to a circular economy for plastics across this deeply integrated economic region, from New York to Minnesota and across the border with the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Québec.

Circular Great Lakes Priorities 

To tackle waste and pollution issues facing the region, the Circular Great Lakes strategy and action plan centers around three key priorities as the initiative moves from vision to action:

• Priority One: Clean up and end plastic waste and litter from entering the Great Lakes watershed, earth’s largest freshwater system.

• Priority Two: Accelerate development of plastic packaging recycling supply chains and markets, with a focus on flexible plastics.

• Priority Three: Achieve a step change in plastics recycling quantity and quality through policy, consumer behavior, and investments in infrastructure and advanced technologies.