Waste workers turn trash into treasure

Plastic Bank links businesses with plastic collection groups to help ease EPR compliance

- By MAT T. RICHTER

Big businesses were asked in 2022 to take accountability for their plastic packaging.

Those with P100 million or more in assets were tasked to gradually recover 80 percent of their plastic product footprint by 2028. Over 2,000 companies are obliged to do that. Three years have passed and, alas, only 942 or barely half have started complying, as per latest data by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

The Extended Producer Responsibility Act, RA No. 11898, demands they recover and recycle the pollutant and prolong products' life cycle for a circular economy. Doing this, especially when they have what looks like an insatiable thirst for profit, is no piece of cake. So, waste workers come to the rescue.

Social fintech Plastic Bank offers companies with solutions to combat plastics by partnering with waste workers to recover and recycle them. Here's a look at how trash pickers, garbage collectors, and recyclers, as well as the organization, are helping businesses do their duty.

Waste is wealth

Operating over 260 branches spanning junkshops to public schools, Plastic Bank links enterprises with plastic collection groups for EPR compliance.

What seemed filthy and useless was a treasure for trash workers and the social fintech.