‘If each 1.5-liter PET bottle were to have a redeemable value of, say, P10, or a tiny shampoo or coffee sachet could be exchanged for P5, litterbugs would think twice before turning potential cash to polluting trash.’
ON her YouTube channel, Kay, a Nigerian immigrant in Sweden, shows a scene that we can say is common in that part of the world: the deposit system. She enters a supermarket carrying a brown bag, not full of groceries, but of empty beverage plastic bottles and cans. On each label is a sign: PANT 1 KR, which means DEPOSIT 1 crown which is equivalent to about six pesos. Kay tosses the bottles into a collection machine with a video display of the running total. At the end of her transaction, the machine prints a voucher for 23 crowns or P135. The voucher is valid for a year and can be cashed or used in a purchase in that store.
Wait, there’s more. Next month, the company that has been collecting the containers in Sweden for 40 years will increase payouts to 2 crowns (P12) for aluminum cans and 3 crowns (P18) for large PET bottles. In 2023, that company, Returback, said it has saved 180,000 tons of carbon dioxide.
The system is also called “pant” in Norway, Denmark and Iceland, “pantt” in Finland, “pfand” in Germany, but “statigield” in the Netherlands. They all mean deposit. Similar deposit systems exist in France, Austria, some American states, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia. Spain’s version will launch in November 2026. All of them in support of a concept called extended producer responsibility, which makes producers responsible for their products “along the entire lifecycle, including at the post-consumer stage.”
The scheme is simple. Consumers pay a deposit on each bottle or can of their favorite drink. As in the Swedish example, the amount is printed on the label. The Norwegian pant is 3 NOK while the German pfand is 0.25 EUR, or about P17. To recover the amount, one must go to a reverse-vending machine, also called a smart eco-llection bin (SEB) or e-waste bin.
Except for the technology, and the legal structure, the practice of a bottle deposit is not new. In elementary school, I made extra coins collecting empty bottles in the school cafeteria and exchanging them for cash. But in this day and age of PET bottles, aluminum cans and sachets, the idea of the deposit, as well as the environmental damage caused by these items, appears to be lost or at least ignored.
In 2022, the Philippine Congress passed Republic Act No. 11898, the Extended Producer Responsibility Act, amending RA 9003 (“Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000”). The law mandates large enterprises that generate plastic packaging waste “to achieve efficient management of plastic packaging waste, reduced production, importation, supply or use of plastic packaging deemed low in reusability, recyclability or retrievability, and plastic neutrality through efficient recovery and diversion schemes.”
It also provides that incentives such as “rewards and recognitions, monetary or otherwise, shall be provided to individuals, private organizations and entities, obliged enterprises, and PROs, including nongovernment organizations, that have undertaken outstanding and innovative projects, technologies, processes and techniques or activities in reuse, recycling, and reduction.”
In compliance, a food-and-beverage giant claimed to have collected and diverted 79 million kilograms (79,000 tonnes) of plastic waste from the environment in 2023, while a soda company three months ago claimed a nationwide network of 6,000 collection hubs.
A shopping mall chain has a nationwide, four-hour, twice-a-month “trash to cash” program. Also, ATM-like SEBs, or Smart E-collection Bins, at malls have been collecting clean and dry sachets, in exchange for burgers.
In my neighborhood, a material resource company collects monthly “donations” of clean, dry and sorted waste: PET and glass bottles, cans, cardboard. The operation happens from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and has none of the foul odor associated with trash collection.
During the latest habagat that showed our continuing vulnerability to flooding, one could not avoid noticing the amount of waste, most of it plastic, that floated with the rampaging waters. Which means we have a long way to go in terms of implementing EPR.
Observe any estero in Metro Manila and you will find more plastic waste making its way into the sea and the oceans.
We encourage all manufacturers of plastic waste not only to intensify and extend collection efforts, but also to incentivize compliance and, vice-versa to penalize non-participation. In my opinion, an unclaimed deposit would be a sufficient penalty.
Recovery need not be directly done by each manufacturer. Competing brands for juice drinks, for example, can engage the same third-party company to retrieve, and pay for, returned containers, not only in the posh malls and supermarkets, but all the way to the “talipapa” or perhaps sari-sari/convenient stores. Same for makers of canned food, drinks and snacks. They can be as ubiquitous as ATMs or the neighborhood cellphone load vendors of a very recent past before there were apps.
If each 1.5-liter PET bottle were to have a redeemable value of, say, P10, or a tiny shampoo or coffee sachet could be exchanged for P5, litterbugs would think twice before turning potential cash to polluting trash. And we would be doing our own viral videos, like Kay’s, exchanging sando bags and the like for money — in the barrios.
