Unilever joins USAID and EY to launch CIRCLE Alliance

CIRCLE’s initial focus is on India, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines, the plan is to expand to other markets by bringing in new organisations with additional funds to invest

Unilever has joined USAID and EY to launch the CIRCLE Alliance, a new public-private initiative aimed at tackling plastic pollution.

The CIRCLE Alliance – a new $21 million public-private collaboration co-founded by Unilever, USAID and EY – aims to support entrepreneurs and small businesses across the plastics value chain to scale solutions that reduce plastic use, tackle plastic waste and build thriving circular economies. It has a particular focus on women, who make up the majority of waste collectors working in the informal sector in the global south.

Rebecca Marmot, Unilever’s Chief Sustainability Officer, 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.”

While CIRCLE’s initial focus is on India, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines, the plan is to expand to other markets by bringing in new organisations with additional funds to invest.