Since 2019, practitioners in China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam have been exchanging under the project’s initiative on EPR for packaging. Governments, municipalities, producers, recyclers, and civil society shared experiences, challenges, as well as recommendations, and international experts contributed technical and regulatory advice and best practice examples from Europe.

This presentation displays the lessons learnt of the Rethinking Plastics project, looking back at 3.5 years of very divers EPR developments in the different project countries. It shall discuss potential enabling and hindering factors for EPR for packaging as well as the potential that the international cooperation between the two regions but also among the project countries in Asia presents to accelerate the effective introduction of EPR.

This guide provides professionals and trainers with practical information on how to organise and conduct training courses in general and on the subject of EPR in particular. It reflects lessons learnt from EPR courses conducted in Vietnam, considers the participants’ feedback and contains links to learning materials.

This guide provides professionals and trainers with practical information on how to organise and conduct training courses in general and on the subject of EPR in particular. It reflects lessons learnt from EPR courses conducted in Vietnam, considers the participants’ feedback and contains links to learning materials.

This infographic on Sustainable Packaging Design summarises important criteria that should be considered when designing plastic packaging products in order to achieve recyclability.

What has happened during the implementation of “Rethinking Plastics” in the Philippines? The brochure has answers and provides an overview of topics, voices, results, findings and recommendations of “Rethinking Plastics” and its pilot projects in Bacolod City, Talisay City, Iloilo City and Batangas Port.

This report summarises the experiences with implementing the EU Directive on Single-Use Plastics in three EU Member States: Sweden, Germany and Greece.

It describes in detail the content of the Directive, how it was elaborated and summarises how each of the case studies handled the transposition of the Directive so far. It also analyses success factors and briefly discusses remaining challenges.

The EPR Toolbox is a collection of internationally relevant knowledge on the topic of EPR for packaging. It contains detailed training materials on EPR, practical country examples and a set of FAQs. Institutional and operational actors, among them public authorities, producers, collectors, operators or recyclers, can now enhance their knowledge about EPR for packaging with the translation of the EPR Toolbox into Bahasa Indonesia. The toolbox was developed by the PREVENT Waste Alliance and translated by ‘Rethinking Plastics’. 

Video HERE.

More about the PREVENT Waste Alliance.

When setting up an EPR system, it is critical to reconsider the integration of collectors into the waste management system. As key players, they are actively contributing to decreasing the amount of waste which winds up in the environment, and by doing so, reducing the financial burden for municipalities. Nevertheless, they are not officially recognized by public authorities, an issue which has been identified as a major bottleneck for the Informal Waste Workers (IWWs) in accessing social services. This informal workforce, most of which are women, is vulnerable to waste price fluctuations, land occupation issues, health injuries and suffers from social stigma. The “Issue Brief: Inclusion of Informal Waste Workers (IWWs) in the transition to sustainable waste management” was jointly developed by UNDP Vietnam and “Rethinking Plastics” based on projects implemented and a joint workshop in April 2022 on “Lessons Learned from Pilot Projects Working with Women Informal Waste Workers in Vietnam”. Drawings on the lessons learned from pilot projects and findings from the workshop in Quy Nhon, this brief offers recommendations for provincial and central policymakers to strengthen the livelihoods of informal waste workers and support their inclusion in evolving waste management systems.

When setting up an EPR system, it is critical to reconsider the integration of collectors into the waste management system. As key players, they are actively contributing to decreasing the amount of waste which winds up in the environment, and by doing so, reducing the financial burden for municipalities. Nevertheless, they are not officially recognized by public authorities, an issue which has been identified as a major bottleneck for the Informal Waste Workers (IWWs) in accessing social services. This informal workforce, most of which are women, is vulnerable to waste price fluctuations, land occupation issues, health injuries and suffers from social stigma. The “Issue Brief: Inclusion of Informal Waste Workers (IWWs) in the transition to sustainable waste management” was jointly developed by UNDP Vietnam and “Rethinking Plastics” based on projects implemented and a joint workshop in April 2022 on “Lessons Learned from Pilot Projects Working with Women Informal Waste Workers in Vietnam”. Drawings on the lessons learned from pilot projects and findings from the workshop in Quy Nhon, this brief offers recommendations for provincial and central policymakers to strengthen the livelihoods of informal waste workers and support their inclusion in evolving waste management systems.