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Report

New report provides a blueprint for circularity of PET bottles in Southeast Asia

Singapore

Launched today at the SEA of Solutions week in Bangkok, Full Circle: Accelerating the circular economy for post-consumer PET bottles in Southeast Asia is a report highlighting the current realities of PET bottle collection and providing a blueprint for the circular economy of PET bottles in the six biggest Southeast Asian countries.

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Meanwhile, PET bottles are 100% recyclable and have one of the highest intrinsic post-consumer material values amongst the materials commonly used for consumer-goods packaging in Southeast Asia. It is for this reason that PET bottles are one of the most commonly collected items by the informal sector.

The informal sector is the backbone of collection for PET bottles in the six Southeast Asian countries, contributing to 97% of all PET collected-for-recycling in the nine cities studied - and thus any solutions for Southeast Asia must include the informal sector.

Multiple efforts have been initiated by the industry and government over the past decade to increase collection and recycling, however most of these efforts have ceased within one to three years or have not ‘moved the needle’ in terms of increasing collected-for-recycling rates. The past initiatives have been quantified and are a ‘drop in the ocean’ relative to the amount of PET bottles consumed.

Against this backdrop and the projected growth in PET bottle consumption of 886,000 tonnes in 2018 to 1.52 million tonnes in 2030, it is critical to focus on systemic solutions. The most effective response to the 

challenges currently facing the post-consumer PET landscape in Southeast Asia is one that effectively and continually boosts the collection and recycling operations currently in place.

The report highlights key systemic solutions to drive circularity: an industry-led Packaging Recycling Organisation (PRO) focused on boosting the value chain (including benefitting the informal sector) coupled with supporting policies, the use of recycled content, and investments into increasing domestic recycling capacity. Similar models have seen success in comparable developing countries such as South Africa and Mexico. PET bottle collection and recycling rates have increased to over 55% in both countries. As of 2018, South Africa has a 66% recycling rate for PET bottle, with 100% of the material recycled locally.

Two other factors that play an important role are improved packaging design to improve the economics of recyclability, and national government and municipal efforts to impact source separation and separate collection.

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