Philippine firms cutting plastics show that polluter-pays laws work in Global South: Nanette Medved-Po

In a country known to be one of the world’s biggest contributors to marine plastic pollution, the circularity advocate and Sustainability Leadership A-List winner has been instrumental in driving the country’s Extended Producer Responsibility regulation.

Social entrepreneur Nanette Medved-Po did not realise the gravity of the plastic pollution problem in her country until she started her first impact project more than a decade ago.

Through HOPE (Generation HOPE Inc. and Friends of HOPE, Inc), she constructed over a hundred classrooms across the country, using proceeds generated from the sale of the programme’s plastic-bottled water.

But in a board meeting for nonprofit WWF Philippines, she learnt about a landmark study that projected that plastic would outweigh fish in the ocean in the coming decades.

The Philippines is one of the world’s worst offenders on marine plastic pollution, releasing more than 350,000 tonnes of plastic waste into the ocean annually, accounting for 36 percent of the world’s total plastic waste, according to one study.

Medved-Po wanted to help solve local education’s problem of not having enough classrooms by raising funds from water bottle sales, but she did not want to do it if it meant creating another dilemma: plastic litter.

In 2019, she created another non-profit, PCX Solutions, which aims to address plastic pollution by working with governments and businesses to develop and implement plastic management solutions.

PCX Solutions advocates for policies such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which holds companies responsible for the full lifecycle of the plastic they use.

The organisation manages a third-party audited Plastic Pollution Reduction Standard to ensure the impact of plastic waste projects, with Medved-Po contributing to the standard’s first draft in 2020. Medved-Po also founded PCX Markets, a marketplace for plastic credits based in Singapore.

The reason [the government exceeded its target for plastic responsibility] is that some of the big corporates over complied. They did not just achieve 20 percent plastic reduction and recovery, but a hundred percent.

PCX Solutions was appointed a producer responsibility organisation (PRO) in 2022, the year when the Philippines passed an EPR law. A PRO helps companies fulfill their obligations related to the collection, recycling, and proper disposal of their products’ packaging waste. A third-party regulator measure the companies’ plastic footprint.

In its first year, EPR aimed to register 2,100 companies to comply with the regulation, but only 947 signed up. However, even though the legislation aimed for registered companies to recover and divert 20 percent of their plastic packaging footprint by the end of 2023, the target was exceeded, Medved-Po shared. Registered firms recovered 23.8 per cent of their packaging footprint that year.

“The reason for this is that some of the big corporates over complied. They did not just achieve 20 percent plastic reduction and recovery, but 100 percent,” said Medved-Po. “What amazing signaling this is for other developing countries to say that [the polluter’s pay principle] works here [in the Philippines].”

Even before becoming active in the sustainability space, Medved-Po says she always wanted to be a force for good.

Although not of Filipino descent, she grew up in the Philippines and became a model and movie actress. Filipinos know her best for playing the iconic role of Darna, the Philippine version of DC Comics’ Wonder Woman in the early 1990s. It was at the height of her fame that she became aware of the influence she could wield among ordinary Filipinos.

She then left the country to go to university in the United States, where she graduated with degrees in finance and entrepreneurship from Babson College in Massachusetts. When she returned to the Philippines in the early 2000s, she was determined to pursue a career that would be of benefit to the country.

In this interview, the 54 year-old entrepreneur tells Eco-Business about her passion for battling plastics pollution and how Philippine companies can be at the forefront of the war on waste.

Tell us how about how your advocacy to tackle plastic pollution began.

When I learnt at a WWF board meeting about a report that there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050, I was horrified. I immediately headed back to the HOPE office after the board meeting, and I told my team: We either figure out how to be responsible for our plastic footprint or we get out of this business altogether [HOPE generated revenue from the sale of plastic-bottled water].

My challenge to the team was: I want you to find a way to be 100 percent plastic-responsible, which means reducing where you can and taking responsibility for your plastic footprint once products are sold. It took us a year and a half to try and figure this out.

In a country like the Philippines, which has very poor infrastructure and a highly fragmented waste management system, it was super challenging.

My “aha” moment was when I realised that if a small player in a low-margin business like ours could afford to make the decision to be responsible for plastic post-consumer, or even upstream by reducing as much as I could, what does that say for the big corporates that have better margins and can afford to be 100 percent plastic responsible?

I grabbed the president of WWF [Philippines] and we went on to [TV host] Karen Davila’s show, and explained how our tiny company was being “plastic responsible”.

After our TV appearance, we got calls from all over the region asking about our method. Giant fast moving consumer goods companies have made public statements to cut plastic by 2030 with zero mechanism to get there, so they were desperate to hear how we were doing it.

The problem was all of these companies that reached out to us did not want to build out an internal team to [focus on plastic responsibility]. It was a distraction for them. This is not their core competency. So they asked to pilot with us because we were doing it anyway. Then it became a task too big for HOPE alone, so that’s when I decided to start PCX.

How did PCX Solutions transition from being a nonprofit to also becoming a producer responsibility organisation (PRO) for the Philippines?

PCX was a PRO even before the Philippines was a compliance market for EPR.

We were first operating in a voluntary market in the Philippines, which made us a big part of the country’s transition to a compliance market. We were invited to join the technical working groups for the legislation drafting by both the Congress and the Senate.

As PRO we help guide compliance of our members like Mondelez, L’Oreal, and Pepsi, for instance. To avoid conflict of interest, we work with third-party auditors like Control Union to make sure that the companies’ footprints are audited properly. We help obliged enterprises deal with reduction and rigid or flexible recycling where we can and then help them remove anything that is left from the environment.

We help them execute through our project partners around the country. We put the documentation together to prove that the companies really did [recover or reduce] and it wasn’t just greenwashing.

What is your assessment of how EPR has fared in the Philippines?

For the first year of the EPR law, the aspiration was to register 2,100 companies but only 947 registered across the country. But I do understand that the communication isn’t great. The DENR [Department of Environment and Natural Resources] doesn’t have a big budget, in fairness to them, and so a lot of obliged enterprises, especially those not in Manila, weren’t even aware that they had to comply.

However, for those that did register, the goal was to recover and divert 20 percent of their plastic packaging footprint. But the target was exceeded – it reached 23.8 percent. The reason is some of the big players who really have been looking for a way to be plastic-responsible over complied. It’s the signaling that’s important. If you are a company that sells noodles to the base of the pyramid and they can afford to take 100 percent responsibility [for plastic recovery] then it’s wonderful signaling.

The Philippines is the third worst offender for ocean plastic pollution, and yet we [showed that] we can do it here. That is amazing signaling for other developing countries to say that [the polluter’s pay principle] works.

It’s a market-based mechanism so it’s doesn’t come out of taxpayer dollars. The government loves it because it doesn’t distract from so many other competing priorities for government dollars.

Brands also love it because they are able to invest their money ... each company chooses what they want to do based on what’s important to them and their supply chain, their customers and their values.

You were a member of the Philippine delegation at the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) on a global plastics treaty, held in Busan, South Korea in November. Tell us about your experience.

I think if every single Filipino could see their country’s delegation at these global conferences, they would be extremely proud. I have so much respect for them. It’s 7am and the plenary room is completely empty except for our head of delegation, ready to work, studying the day’s items.

On the last day of the summit, I had to leave early but was streaming it from the airport. The Philippine delegation learnt there was going to be a show of force at the closing plenary, because there was so much protesting that the language wasn’t finalised.

I was eagerly watching the live stream from my boarding gate, when a delegate in the video started introducing a group called the “coalition of the willing” who were pushing for final language to be passed.

I was literally weeping at the boarding gate, I couldn’t control myself. I could see the footage of the members states who stood up clapping to support finalising the language, which led to INC-5.2 in Geneva. It shows it’s not over; high-level negotiations on striking a global treaty for plastics may have stalled, but global efforts to tackle plastic pollution continue. Because of that, we have very high hopes for a treaty in Geneva.

[The “Coalition of the Willing” at INC-5 refers to a bloc of over 100 countries, including the Philippines, which declared their commitment to push for an ambitious, legally binding global treaty to end plastic pollution, in contrast to a minority of countries seeking to weaken or delay the agreement. It led to INC-5 concluding without a finalised treaty but an agreement to continue negotiations at INC-5.2 in Geneva in August].

What’s the hardest aspect of your job?

There are stakeholders who are very concerned purely about doing business. I understand that because they have shareholders, but that has to be offset [with wanting to be more sustainable]. That’s probably the hardest part of my job. But if I think about the companies that don’t take that attitude of just focusing on profit, that gets us through as a team. We’re inspired everyday by companies who want to do the right thing. We focus on that, rather than the folks that haven’t quite bought into it yet.

‍

This article was originally published here in Eco-Business.

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍