Destination… the Philippines

First country in Southeast Asian region to implement mandatory EPR for plastic packaging

2 September 2025

Starting from 2023, the EPR Act of 2022 in the Philippines obliged producers of products in plastic packaging to establish and register EPR programmes for plastic packaging.

These programmes can include up to twelve activities and strategies encompassing waste diversion and waste reduction. They include waste recovery schemes through redemption, buy-back, offsetting, or any method or strategy that will efficiently result in the high retrievability, high recyclability, and resource recovery of waste products.

Ambitious targets

The ambitious waste diversion targets, pertaining to the plastic packaging footprint in the year preceding the compliance year, are laid out below:

Reporting year	Basis for the Plastic Footprint	Basis for the Diversion	Diversion Target
2023	2022 or 2023 (transitory provision)	2023	20%
2024	2023	2024	40%
2025	2024	2025	50%
2026	2025	2026	60%
2027	2026	2027	70%
2028	2027	2028	80%

Producers, defined as brand owners, product manufacturers, importers and distributors, may meet their EPR obligations individually, collectively or through a producer responsibility organisation (PRO).

Strengthening EPR

Three years after publishing the EPR Act, the Environmental Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR-EMB) now wishes to evaluate, strengthen and further develop the Philippine EPR system.

Landbell Group, through an EPR advisory assignment contracted by the German development agency (GIZ), is involved in this process.

The project is financed within the EU-Philippines Green Economy Partnership supporting the Philippines’ transition towards a climate-smart and circular economy. GIZ is one of the implementing partners.

Six tasks

Landbell Group, in consortium with GreenForest Solutions and in collaboration with local partners, will deliver six tasks between 2025-2027:

development of an effective EPR auditing system
evaluation of EPR measures for PROs, Collectives and Obliged Enterprises
promotion of reduction and reuse measures
assessment and further development of the EPR scheme
development of a methodology to calculate reduction of GHG emissions and to conduct a mass balance study, and
technical support for conceptualisation of an EPR demo project

This is Landbell’s fifth EPR advisory project in the ASEAN region. See Compass article here.