Report “Integration of the informal sector into the implementation of the Extended Producer Responsibility scheme for plastic packaging”

Global plastic pollution has already caused serious consequences for the environment and the oceans, as well as influenced several economic and social issues. An estimated 11 million tons of plastic are leakage into the world’s oceans every year. Globally, 32% of packaging waste is being disposed of into the environment.

The pilot project ‘Enhancing plastic packaging collection, sorting and recycling’, implemented by the Institut de la Recherche pour le Development (IRD) and the Hanoi Architectural University (HAU), is funded by the ‘Rethinking Plastics – Circular Economy Solutions to Marine Litter’ project of the European Union and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). ‘Rethinking Plastics’ is implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and Expertise France.

To fulfill all the activities of the pilot project, IRD contracted with ENDA to elaborate and conduct social surveys along the post consumers plastic packaging value chain (including consumers, domestic and recyclable aggregators, transporters, recyclers) in order to identify and report in HCMC on the gaps and constraints to integrate the informal recyclable aggregators to the future EPR system.