Insights · Environment · 26 July 2022 · 2 min read
Extended producer responsibility: what Republic Act 11898 asks of a large enterprise
Published in 2022. The figures and the policy are those of the time. Ask us where it stands today.
The Extended Producer Responsibility Act became law on 23 July 2022. It amends the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000 and, for the first time, makes the company that sells a product responsible for the packaging it leaves behind. The obligation is measured in tonnes and audited.
Compiled in September 2026 from the releases of the time, with the revisions the agencies have published since. Nothing here is a forecast.
Who it covers
Large enterprises, defined as those with total assets above 100 million pesos, that use plastic packaging. Smaller companies may join voluntarily. The obliged company registers a programme with the National Solid Waste Management Commission within six months of the law taking effect.
The targets
20% of the plastic packaging footprint recovered by the end of 2023.
40% in 2024, 50% in 2025, 60% in 2026, 70% in 2027.
80% in 2028 and each year after.
Recovery means collection, recycling, or diversion from disposal, including into a waste-to-energy plant or a cement kiln. Fines run from 5 to 20 million pesos, and a third offence can cost the business permit.
Where the tonnes go
Much of the packaging the law covers is the flexible, multi-layer kind that no recycler wants. The routes left for it are refuse-derived fuel for a cement kiln and a waste-to-energy plant. The law does not say so, but the arithmetic does: a company with a 60% target in 2026 and a footprint of mostly sachets will be paying somebody to burn them in a permitted facility.
What it started
Within a year a market for audited recovery had appeared, with producer responsibility organisations aggregating obligations and paying collectors by the tonne. That is the demand side of a Philippine waste-to-energy sector, created by statute, and it is the reason the feasibility studies of the following years were about revenue rather than about whether anybody would deliver the waste.
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