PH plastic waste laws exist, but gaps still drive leakage

Part three

Part one: Low consumption, high leakage: The Philippines’ plastic paradox

Part two: From bin to ocean: How plastic waste escapes Philippine systems

MANILA, Philippines — Plastic waste in the Philippines moves through a long chain of systems before it reaches rivers, coastlines, dumpsites or landfills.

What begins as packaging in stores passes through collection, sorting, transport, disposal and recovery systems that determine whether waste remains contained or leaks into the environment.

The path is rarely linear. At multiple stages, plastics can leave formal waste streams through illegal dumping, open burning, inadequate collection, weak segregation or insufficient recycling infrastructure.

Earlier parts of this Inquirer series examined how leakage occurs along the Philippine waste chain despite the country’s relatively lower per-capita plastic consumption compared with wealthier economies.

Data from multiple global and local studies showed that the country’s plastics crisis is shaped less by volume of use alone and more by weaknesses in collection, recovery and waste governance.

A 2020 World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) material flow analysis estimated that only about 9 percent of plastic waste generated in the Philippines is recycled. The study also found that around 33 percent ends up in dumpsites or landfills, while approximately 35 percent leaks into the open environment each year, underscoring the scale of unmanaged plastic waste.

Recent estimates from Earth Action’s Plastic Overshoot Day reports further illustrate the scale of leakage. The Philippines was projected to release approximately 29,338 tons of microplastics into waterways in both 2024 and 2025, down from an estimated 31,807 tons in 2023. The same assessments also projected thousands of tons of plastic-related chemical additives entering waterways annually.

The country has enacted major waste laws intended to address these gaps.

Republic Act No. 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, established the country’s primary legal framework for segregation, recycling, diversion and disposal.

Republic Act No. 11898, or the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Act of 2022, later expanded responsibility to large enterprises producing plastic packaging.

Yet despite these legal frameworks, plastic leakage remains high.

Environmental organizations, policy reviews and interviews suggest the issue lies less in the absence of legislation and more in uneven implementation, limited infrastructure, funding constraints and inconsistent enforcement.

Legal framework

Republic Act No. 9003, enacted in 2001, established the country’s ecological solid waste management system.

The law directs the state to adopt “a systematic, comprehensive and ecological solid waste management program” that protects public health while encouraging waste minimization, recycling, reuse, composting and environmentally sound disposal systems.

RA 9003 requires segregation at source, waste diversion, composting, recycling and the establishment of materials recovery facilities at the barangay level.

But plastic waste presents unique challenges because many products entering the waste stream were never designed for easy recovery.

Who’s responsible for enforcing RA 9003?

One reason plastic waste continues to leak into the environment despite RA 9003 is that responsibility is spread across multiple levels of government.

Under its declaration of policies, RA 9003 states that it will “retain primary enforcement and responsibility of solid waste management with local government units while establishing a cooperative effort among the national government, other local government units, non-government organizations, and the private sector.”

In practice, no single agency is solely responsible for managing the country’s waste.

Households and businesses must segregate waste at source.

Barangays are responsible for implementing segregation programs, operating materials recovery facilities, and collecting biodegradable and recyclable waste.

Cities and municipalities oversee broader collection systems, local solid waste management plans and residual waste disposal.

At the national level, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), through the National Solid Waste Management Commission, provides policy direction, reviews local plans and monitors implementation.

Section 10 of RA 9003 is explicit:

“The LGUs shall be primarily responsible for the implementation and enforcement of the provisions of this Act within their respective jurisdictions.”

During a recent #DENRDiscussions episode posted on the agency’s official social media page to mark the law’s 25th anniversary, Environment Secretary Raphael P.M. Lotilla described the law as intentionally decentralized.

“The Solid Waste Management Act of 2000 introduced a management framework, and quite innovative for its time, in that it places the responsibility on all of us. So it doesn’t adopt a top-down approach or a centralized one, but rather it calls on everyone, particularly the citizenry and the local government units from the barangays up, to engage in the ecological management of our solid waste,” Lotilla said.

But he acknowledged that implementation remains a challenge.

“The problem areas are at the level of implementation,” he said.

Environmental groups have long raised similar concerns.

Froilan Grate, executive director of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) Asia Pacific, said funding and enforcement remain among the biggest barriers.

“The first one is the lack of funding, as evidenced by that provision in RA 9003 that was never operationalized. So there has never been a National Solid Waste Fund. So funding is really a challenge,” Grate said.

He said enforcement has also been inconsistent despite the law already containing accountability mechanisms.

“And second is enforcement. The law is in place for the past 26 years. It is a very good law. It has provisions for actually punishing noncompliance, and yet no one has really been punished,” Grate said.

Environmental groups, however, distinguish isolated enforcement actions from the kind of consistent, nationwide implementation envisioned under RA 9003.

In June 2025, local authorities in Iloilo City investigated a beverage depot after sacks containing expired products were found dumped along the Jaro River.

Officials said cases for violating RA 9003 and the Clean Water Act were expected to be filed, while city authorities were also considering revoking the establishment’s permit to operate.

The incident illustrates how environmental enforcement often happens at the local level, even as broader concerns about nationwide implementation persist.

Responsibility returns to companies

While RA 9003 largely assigns waste management responsibilities to local governments, RA 11898, or the Extended Producer Responsibility Act of 2022, was designed to address a longstanding gap: the limited accountability of companies that place plastic packaging into the market.

The law requires large enterprises with assets exceeding P100 million to recover or offset their plastic packaging footprint.

Recovery targets began at 20 percent in 2023 and will increase by 10 percentage points annually until reaching 80 percent by 2028.

Companies may comply through collection, recycling, reuse programs, waste diversion projects and investments in recovery infrastructure.

DENR, through the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB), monitors compliance through annual EPR Compliance Audit Reports.

Participation has steadily increased since the law took effect. As of December 2025, DENR said 1,017 enterprises had registered EPR programs, either individually, collectively or through producer responsibility organizations.

DENR Assistant Secretary Jacqueline Caancan said the figures indicate that more companies are moving beyond registration and into implementation.

“Overall, this reflects a steadily increasing level of compliance under the EPR Act of 2022, as more enterprises transition from registration toward full program implementation and reporting,” Caancan said.

Companies recovered around 168 million kilograms out of 509 million kilograms of reported plastic footprints in 2023.

In 2024, recovery increased to approximately 246 million kilograms out of 440 million kilograms generated.

Enforcement a work in progress

The EPR Act also contains penalties for noncompliance. Companies that fail to register their EPR programs may face fines ranging from P5 million to P20 million, along with the possible suspension of their business permits.

But publicly available information remains limited on how often these penalties have been imposed.

While DENR has released registration and plastic recovery figures since the EPR law took effect, there is currently no publicly available consolidated report detailing how many companies have ultimately been fined or identifying specific enterprises that have been penalized under the EPR law.

EMB said enforcement efforts are ongoing, including issuing show cause orders to enterprises that may be covered by the law but have not yet registered under the EPR system.

At the same time, DENR said compliance has steadily improved.

In 2023, DENR data showed that only about 16.55 percent, or 662 out of roughly 4,000 enterprises registered with the Department of Trade and Industry, had submitted plastic waste management programs under EPR.

READ: DENR says only 17 percent of PH companies complying with law on plastics

Inquirer also reached out to DENR for comment and interview requests regarding waste management implementation, plastic policies, enforcement mechanisms, and penalties imposed under the EPR law.

As of publication, the agency had yet to respond.

Companies comply differently

Several companies have expanded waste recovery initiatives to meet their obligations under the law.

Nestlé Philippines has been among the more active participants.

The company previously announced that it recovered and diverted 7,016 metric tons of plastic waste from landfills and oceans, allowing it to achieve plastic neutrality for three consecutive months.

“This recognition is a testament to Nestlé Philippines’ commitment to supporting EPR in the country and also highlights the value of working together to shape a waste-free future,” said Mauricio Alarcon, chair and chief executive officer of Nestlé Philippines.

READ: Nestlé PH honored with special citation and partners Leadership Award for exemplary leadership

McDonald’s Philippines and Republic Cement’s ecoloop have also partnered to convert plastic waste generated in restaurants into alternative fuel used in cement manufacturing.

“At ecoloop, we believe sustainability is achieved through collaboration. Our partnership with McDonald’s Philippines demonstrates how shared responsibility can turn plastic waste into valuable resources and drive meaningful progress toward a circular economy,” said Angela Valencia, director of ecoloop-Republic Cement.

Hard-to-recover plastics test EPR

Even as companies expand recovery programs under EPR, environmental groups say the law will face significant challenges if products entering the market remain difficult or uneconomical to recover.

The issue is especially visible in the Philippines, where sachets, wrappers and other flexible plastics dominate consumer markets.

Studies estimate that Filipinos use around 164 million sachets every day. At least 62 percent are composed of multilayer materials that are difficult to recycle.

Experts say this creates a structural mismatch between the products entering the market and the systems tasked with managing them after disposal.

Even well-run barangays and cities can struggle if large volumes of low-value and difficult-to-recover plastics continue flowing into communities every day.

Investments in segregation, collection and materials recovery facilities can improve outcomes, but those systems face limitations when much of the packaging entering the waste stream was never designed for easy recovery in the first place.

Grate said waste management systems alone cannot solve the problem.

“The reality is that even with the best waste management systems in the world, without seriously looking at plastic production as an issue, any waste management systems would be overwhelmed,” Grate said.

Greenpeace Philippines Zero Waste Campaigner Marian Ledesma said the system itself was built around disposability.

“Our systems were really designed for one, disposability. These corporations that run these systems, they’re highly dependent on single-use plastics,” Ledesma said.

Experts say one of EPR’s biggest tests will be whether it can encourage companies not only to recover plastic waste after disposal, but also to redesign products before they reach consumers.

Plastics lose value despite sorting rules

RA 9003 requires waste segregation before collection.

Some local governments have shown that stronger implementation is possible. San Fernando, Pampanga, has often been cited as one of the country’s leading zero-waste examples.

Studies by Mother Earth Foundation showed that waste diversion increased from 12 percent in 2012 to 80.69 percent in 2018, while barangay compliance with segregation reached 93 percent.

The city’s approach combined segregation at source, separate collection systems, functional MRFs, composting programs and sustained public education campaigns.

Quezon City has also expanded local regulations to reduce certain single-use plastics.

Experts said these examples suggest that stronger implementation is possible when systems remain consistent from households to collection and recovery.

However, they said such successes remain unevenly replicated nationwide.

Ledesma said segregation frequently breaks down during collection.

“The problem with a lot of our waste management systems is that these contractors also don’t follow the true segregation-at-source rules. It’s very rare for a city to implement it,” Ledesma said.

She said households may segregate correctly only to see materials recombined later.

“Even if households, people or even commercial establishments were segregated, here comes a city contractor with just one garbage truck dumping everything into one truck and taking it all into the landfill,” Ledesma said.

Grate said these inconsistencies can discourage public participation and create a cycle that weakens trust in the system.

“[I]n waste segregation, mayors would say people do not follow waste segregation. And then when you go down, people would say: ‘I am segregating but when the truck passes, they will also mix. So why would I segregate?’” Grate said.

He said the issue often lies less with communities themselves and more with whether systems are designed to support participation.

“So it is not a problem for people, it is the system. So when you go to barangays where there is a waste collector, there is a carton, there is a container for the rotting, there is a container for the plastic, there is a container for the steel,” Grate said.

“It was so easy for people to follow because they know that whatever they do, it is not a waste,” he added.

“I have worked again with many communities. I don’t see any community that cannot support environmental regulations only if they are given the right information and the right system to work with,” Grate said.

When segregation breaks down during collection or transport, plastics that might otherwise remain recyclable often end up in mixed disposal streams before recovery becomes possible.

MRFs remain uneven

RA 9003 requires barangays or clusters of barangays to establish materials recovery facilities (MRFs) as part of local waste diversion systems.

These facilities are intended to sort recyclable materials, compost organic waste and reduce the volume of waste sent to disposal sites.

MRFs may include sorting areas, composting systems, recycling hubs and temporary storage spaces that support segregation and recovery before final disposal.

However, implementation remains uneven across local governments.

A 2023 Commission on Audit (COA) performance review found that MRF expansion has consistently fallen short of Philippine Development Plan targets, despite year-on-year increases in the number of barangays served.

Analysis by University of the Philippines Diliman associate professor Dr. Rogelio Alicor Panao showed that implementation improved in absolute numbers but failed to keep pace with planned benchmarks.

Panao, who is also the Inquirer’s in-house data scientist, described MRFs as “the structural anchor of the Philippines’ waste management framework under Republic Act No. 9003.”

COA data showed that in 2017, approximately 13,324 barangays were served by MRFs, representing a shortfall of about 3.3 percent from the Philippine Development Plan target.

By 2019, the gap widened to 11.71 percent, as MRF coverage reached 13,994 barangays but still fell short of increasing targets.

By 2022, around 17,047 barangays were reported to have MRF access, yet performance remained nearly 19.45 percent below target levels, according to Panao’s analysis of COA figures.

Panao wrote that the findings reflect “a persistent gap between the government’s policy objectives and its actual institutional delivery.”

The COA audit identified several implementation constraints, including land scarcity, inconsistent funding and limited technical capacity at the barangay level.

The report also emphasized the need for improved data verification to ensure that reported facilities are operational and functioning as intended.

Grate pointed to another longstanding issue.

“There was a provision there that says that there is a National Solid Waste Fund at the national government, and supposedly this would fund initiatives on the ground,” he said, adding that “the law has been in place for 26 years now. That provision, creating the National Solid Waste Fund, was never funded.”

In Siquijor, however, local initiatives have shown progress, with 89 of 134 barangays operating MRFs that support segregation and recyclable storage.

Still, these examples remain unevenly distributed nationwide.

Twenty-five years after RA 9003 was enacted, implementation continues to depend heavily on local capacity, funding and political commitment.

Implementation gaps shape plastic outcomes

National laws such as RA 9003 and the EPR Act establish the framework for managing plastic waste.

Yet implementation gaps continue to shape whether those policies translate into measurable reductions in leakage.

Across the country, local governments, communities and informal recovery networks increasingly determine how plastic moves through the waste system — from segregation and collection to diversion and enforcement.

The next part of this series examines how local governments, ordinances and community-led programs are translating national policy into measurable action — and why implementation increasingly depends on what happens at the city and barangay level. /dm

Part four: How Philippine cities, provinces are building local plastic solutions

[This story was produced for the SEA vs. Plastics project of the Southeast Asia Editors Network, in partnership with AAJA-Asia and the Temasek Foundation.]

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