The Power of 50,000 EcoAllies

Your commitment, passion, and purchasing power fuel the engine of circular packaging. By choosing recycled materials, you help keep resources in circulation, reduce reliance on extraction, and strengthen the broader recycling ecosystem.

This year, your packaging decisions added up to something big.

Every number tells a story of materials reused, emissions prevented, and a system pushed—bit by bit—toward true circularity.

Our 2025 environmental savings data draws directly from the Environmental Paper Network's most up to date assumptions and LCA results.

Milestones & Moments of Real Progress

Even in a year full of challenges, our team and EcoAllies made incredible strides in material innovation, carbon-smart solutions, and verified transparency.

Progress in an Imperfect World

by Saloni Doshi, CEO of EcoEnclose

As we close out 2025 and look ahead to a new year, I’ve been reflecting deeply on the challenges we’ve faced, the lessons we’ve learned, and the real work still ahead. At EcoEnclose, our mission has always been clear: transform packaging into a positive force for the planet. But progress is rarely linear—and this year, that truth was more evident than ever.

This impact report is not only a celebration of our wins. It’s also an honest look at where things were hard, where we stumbled, and how those experiences are shaping a stronger, smarter, more resilient EcoEnclose moving into 2026.

Reinventing Circularity: Recycling Bags back into Bags and the Lessons of Failure

One of our most ambitious goals this year was to recycle post-consumer poly bags back into high-quality flexible film packaging.

And we learned quickly: it’s hard.

Poly bags come to us with zippers, labels, adhesives, and all the oddities of real-world use. Running that scrap through extrusion and conversion lines isn’t anything like working with clean, uniform material.

We ran multiple batches. Some worked. Several didn’t.

But each “failure” taught us exactly what we needed to build a real pathway forward: how to adapt to impurities, getting to the right blend of post-consumer and post-industrial inputs, how to fine-tune our processes, and how to engineer systems that are resilient to the imperfections of actual, lived-in waste streams.

As we get to the end of the year, I have newfound confidence in our progress and ability to make this vision a reality. And in circularity, progress is everything.

Running Novel Materials on Legacy Equipment

Another core challenge this year: running groundbreaking, bio-based, and next-generation materials on lines designed decades ago for PP and LDPE.

These materials behave differently.

Different melt points. Different rigidity. Variability from batch to batch, particularly with the most promising bio-based alternatives, which simply aren’t as chemically “predictable” as fossil-fuel plastics.

We pushed hard. We hit real barriers.

And we were incredibly fortunate to partner with brands who leaned in with us—who collaborated, tested, iterated, and stayed open even when early runs weren’t perfect.

The truth is: if replacing fossil fuels with sustainable materials were easy, it would already be the status quo.

It’s not. But the future requires us to do it anyway.

This year reinforced something we say often internally: progress over perfection. Introducing novel materials into commercial packaging means accepting variability, celebrating incremental wins, and recognizing that every imperfect trial moves the entire industry forward.

Supporting Brands Through a Tough Macroeconomic Year

While we drove innovation internally, we also observed how challenging 2025 was for many of our partners.

Tariffs, layoffs, ongoing supply chain shocks, and general economic uncertainty created real constraints. Most brands we work with genuinely want to choose the most circular and sustainable solution, but had to prioritize cost stability and risk mitigation this year.

This meant that—at times—we made decisions we didn’t love.

Supporting brands by shifting from paper to plastic when necessary.

Lowering recycled content to meet cost targets.

Providing packaging that was less circular than what we had previously produced for them.

While our mission is to help bring brands the most circular packaging possible, I’m also running a business myself, and I get it. Our commitment is to help our EcoAllies navigate these variabilities successfully, and we know that when the economic winds shift, we can help them work towards even more circular solutions.

EPR Compliance: A Necessary Burden Creating Short-Term Tradeoffs

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation continues to expand across states.

I strongly believe in its long-term potential to drive real impact towards our north star of circularity. However, the short-term implications turned 2025 into a year of adjustment and strain for brands.

Compliance work is costly, time-consuming, and confusing.

As a result, many companies had to divert sustainability resources toward simply understanding and meeting regulatory requirements—instead of investing in packaging improvements.

We see this as a temporary but meaningful setback.

In the long run, EPR can drive incredible progress by rewarding circularity and penalizing waste. But in the present moment, it has unintentionally shifted resources away from innovation. Part of our role now is helping brands navigate this evolving landscape so they can get back to investing in better solutions.

Looking Ahead: Resilience, Learning, and an Unwavering Commitment

What I love most about sustainability work is that it demands humility. This year reminded us that innovation isn’t just about breakthroughs—it’s about persistence, curiosity, and the courage to try again after things don’t work.

2025 challenged us in ways we couldn’t have predicted.

But it also strengthened my conviction: the path to circularity will be messy, imperfect, nonlinear…but it will be one we (and our broader EcoAlly community) move forward.

We enter 2026 with more knowledge, stronger partnerships, improved processes, and an even deeper commitment to driving packaging toward a truly regenerative future.

To our customers, collaborators, and team: thank you for being part of the forward movement—especially when it’s hard.

Here’s to progress, together.

— Saloni

Let’s Build an Even More Circular 2026