MARINE DEBRIS

The Plastic Flamingo is a social enterprise aimed at collecting plastic waste and recycling it into construction material. Based in the Philippines, the Plastic Flamingo, or the Plaf, collects and sorts plastics before shredding the plastic and transforming it into planks and posts. These planks, also called eco-lumber, is being used to make fencing, furniture, and even shelter, as the Philippine population suffers from recurring damages from annual typhoons and floods. 

The Plaf has several drop-off points mainly in Metro Manila, with a few in the cities of Cebu and Davao. These are areas where the public can drop off their plastic waste. The company then weighs, cleans, and sorts the plastic, before being molded into eco-lumber or plastic pellets, depending on the project.

The Plaf also offers itself as an Extended Producer Responsibility Partner, wherein large enterprises that produce plastic waste create a framework to prevent waste leaking into the environment, as stipulated in the Extended Producer Responsibility Act of 2022. They partner with companies to upcycle their plastic wastes. Some past partners include World Wide Fund for Nature Philippines, Tetra Pak, and Coca-Cola Far East Limited Philippines, Inc.

In Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, a carton recycling operation, aims to collect and recycle 3,000 tons of discarded beverage cartons. Tetra Pak and Circular Action are implementing the program with the help of the Packaging Recycling Organization (PRO) Vietnam, a partnership of Vietnamese consumer goods and packaging companies. The program will last from April 2022 until March 2023.

The program intends to work with informal waste collectors to collect beverage cartons and resell them to Dong Tien Paper Factory, who would recycle them into new products. In addition, Tetra Pak has invested 1.2 billion EUR in the factory to increase beverage recycling capacity by early 2022.

The program began by providing incentives to larger waste aggregators, and local pickers profit from greater prices paid for carton materials. Presently, vehicles travel throughout the city advertising fixed rates at which waste collectors can sell these beverage cartons. The program uses the Circular Action KOLEKT App to track the collection of these cartons, adding a digital component to the program.

Project STOP (Stop Ocean Plastics) initiated in Indonesia aims to create a low-cost, circular, replicable and zero-leakage waste management system in collaboration with households, institutions, local initiatives and informal waste workers. It was piloted in April 2018 in Muncar, Indonesia and further expanded to Jembrana, Pasuruan and Banyuwagi. 

The project was introduced to address the issue of open and haphazard disposal of waste in the absence of a formal waste management system. It works in alignment to the principle of self-sufficiency and empowers locals to manage their own waste while enabling them to generate profit from it to make the working modality financially sustainable. It supports the local implementation through investments, technical expertise, waste system design, project management, capacity building and recycling/ reprocessing valorisation. 

The primary founders of the initiative are SystemIQ, an ecological business consulting organisation, and Borealis, a plastic production company. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, NOVA Chemicals, Nestle, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, Bourouge and Siegwerk, Veolia, Sustainable Waste Indonesia, Schwarz and HP are other integral partners. The Ministry of Environment and Forest, Ministry of National Development Planning, Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing and local governments of the project sites also provide domestic support. 

It has four main objectives:

• to achieve zero waste leakage into the environment through regular residential and industrial waste collection
• create circular system by generating opportunities that create value from waste
• achieve economic sustainability through local job opportunities
• create conducive environment for tourism and fishing to flourish locally

The concept of waste bank emerged in Indonesia with the introduction of the 2008 waste policy and­ materialized into action through the Ministry of Environment Regulation 13/2012. It provides a comprehensive framework for the establishment and development of waste banks in 250 cities across the country. The primary focus of the waste banks is to serve as a collection point for waste materials that have further prospects of recycling and reuse. 

The 13/2012 regulation specifies the requirements, mechanism and operation guidelines for waste banks, recognizing their integral role in application of the 3R principles and the extended producer responsibility (EPR). It shifts from the traditional collect-transport-dispose approach to a more sustainable model focused on waste segregation and recycling of valuable waste. 

Waste banks are typically run by the community with technical assistance by the central and local governments. In other cases, it might also be initiated by the local governments or the private sector under their corporate sector responsibility (CSR) programs. In general, they function as a collection point where residents can deposit their waste. The sorted waste is eventually purchased by junk collectors for further processing and the depositors receive nominal cash as an incentive in return of their waste. 

Overall, the policy sets waste banks as crucial intermediaries in waste management that act as buffer points for collection of recyclables rather than allowing them to end up in landfills.