SGV & Co., Climate Change and Sustainability Services (CCaSS) Partner and the Philippine Alliance for Recycling and Material Sustainability (PARMS) signed a memorandum of agreement to formalize the technical partnership between SGV & Co. and PARMS for the implementation of the pilot Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Waste Diversion Credit Scheme (WDCS) of PARMS.
The EPR WDCS provides a market-based mechanism for obliged enterprises to ensure that their product packaging-related waste does not end up in landfills or in nature. Obliged companies will work with different stakeholders in this regard through the EPR WDCS. This is aligned with Republic Act No. 11898 (RA 11898), also known as the EPR Act of 2022, which lapsed into law on July 23. The law requires obliged enterprises to recover or offset a portion of their respective plastic footprint. Waste diverters working with the obliged enterprise play a vital role in the EPR system.
The PARMS partnership with SGV & Co. provides an opportunity for waste diverters to undergo readiness assessment for audit and compliance of their waste-diversion claims, following the standards set by PARMS under the EPR WDCS. SGV & Co. will serve as the first accredited certification body in this program. As a certification body, SGV & Co. will review the accuracy and completeness of information declared by the waste diverters under the program.
SGV & Co. will provide findings and recommendations on the compliance of the waste diverters with the WDCS standards during the pilot implementation, as well as recommendations for improvements and streamlining of the WDCS standards’ applicability in the Philippines.
Crispian Lao, PARMS president, said the pilot EPR WDCS is integral to PARMS’s advocacy to implement a program for increased resource recovery and reduced landfill dependence towards zero waste. In 2020, PARMS launched the “Zero Waste to Nature, Ambisyon 2030 (ZWTN 2030)” initiative which includes, at its core, a roadmap with targets for multi-sectoral collaborative solutions to manage plastic waste.
Benjamin Villacorte, SGV & Co. partner from the firm’s Climate Change and Sustainability Services team, said with the enactment of RA 11898 (EPR Act of 2022), “we are taking an early look at the EPR system in action as companies monitor their plastic waste footprint and begin the process of meeting their waste recovery and diversion targets with the help of waste diverters. With these developments comes the need for independent third-party audits. We have long embraced the opportunity to assist in tackling Filipinos’ contribution to the plastic pollution problem and in promoting plastic circularity alongside businesses. We continue to do so as we welcome this exciting opportunity with PARMS.”
