Role of Collection Infrastructure in Recycling Programs

𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐞’𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 From 1 April 2026, most bottled and canned drinks in Singapore will come with a 10-cent refundable deposit. Finish your drink. Return the bottle or can at a designated point. Get your 10 cents back. This applies to pre-packaged beverages in plastic and metal containers from 150ml to 3 L, including water, soft drinks, juices, dairy and alcohol. Freshly prepared drinks (think bubble tea,kopi/teh) are not covered. Consumers will identify eligible products by a deposit mark and barcode on the bottle or can, which helps both redemption and fraud prevention. There’s also a six-month transition period from April to September 2026 so retailers and producers can sell through older stock without the deposit. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧 — 𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞 In Germany, bottle returns have become part of everyday life. They return their containers when it’s convenient, and return rates regularly hit the high 80s to 90 % range. In Austria, a nationwide deposit scheme rolled out in 2025. Within its first year, over a billion containers were returned, showing that when the system is put in place with enough return points and clear signals, people do participate. 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐞 • Making recycling convenient — more than 1,000 return points are expected island-wide, including reverse vending machines and, eventually, supermarket and community locations. • Raising awareness — a small deposit nudges people to pause and act, turning ‘throwing away’ into ‘returning’. • Cleaner materials — returned bottles and cans are less contaminated than mixed recycling, which improves what actually gets recycled into new products. NEA is also bringing in an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) model here: beverage producers and importers have to register with the scheme operator, label their products properly, and fund the collection and recycling on their behalf. 𝑨 𝒇𝒆𝒘 𝒒𝒖𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒉 𝒌𝒆𝒆𝒑𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒏 𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒅 𝒂𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒓𝒐𝒍𝒍𝒔 𝒐𝒖𝒕 • Convenience will decide participation. Germany and Austria make returning easy — reverse vending machines or counters right where you shop. Will the same hold true here? • Where does the material go next? Collection is great, but what happens downstream (recycling markets, actual reuse, etc.) is what ultimately counts. How will our blue-bin recycling streams align with this scheme? Clear messaging is very important. This scheme is a good start — pragmatic, evidence-inspired, and built around real consumer behaviour. It’s not the whole answer to packaging waste, but it’s a tangible, implementable shift in expectations and behaviour. Getting people into the habit of returning containers — and then making sure those containers are genuinely recycled into new products — is how we make circularity real.

♻️ Another wake-up call for the textile recycling industry: TEXAID Germany files for insolvency! Following SOEX and I:Collect ’s bankruptcy last year, another major player in textile collection and sorting is going under. TEXAID, one of the few remaining industrial-scale players in Europe, has entered restructuring proceedings for its German operations. We are now witnessing a systemic breakdown of the very infrastructure that we actually do need in order to build the circular economy. These bankruptcies aren’t isolated. They reflect deep structural problems: - Oversupply of used textiles due to ultra-fast fashion - Collapse of traditional export markets (e.g. Africa, Eastern Europe) - Rising operational costs with little demand for recycled material - Lack of incentives for reuse or circular design - Unclear or delayed implementation of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) And yet, without stable collection and sorting systems, no recycling technology will scale. If the current infrastructure collapses before EPR kicks in, we risk having to build it up from scratch — losing time, trust, and momentum. ✅ What needs to happen now: - Keep infrastructure alive with courageous investments and innovative ideas (like Boer Group and their investment in MOOT). - Emergency funding and bridge financing to stabilize collection and sorting systems. - Accelerate demand-side mechanisms - Mandates or incentives for recycled content and extended use. Push brands to integrate recycled fibers not as a pilot, but at scale. - Fast-track EPR regulation - at CIRCULAR REPUBLIC my team is working on a blueprint for Germany We don’t just need pilot projects – we need automated sorting lines (like from NewRetex A/S), recycling plants, resale platforms, logistics innovation, and buyers at industrial scale. We now have a short window to protect what’s left, and build what’s needed. Let’s not wait for the system to collapse before we act. #circularfashion #textilerecycling #EPR #circulareconomy #infrastructure #reuse #scale #circularrepublic

ScrapUncle & Waste Management ₹54.75 crores saved annually. India doesn't have a waste problem. We have a broken collection system. 4 million waste pickers and kabadiwalas quietly keep our cities from drowning in 62 million tonnes of annual waste. They recover 23% of our waste. They achieve a 60% plastic recycling rate (global average: 14%). They saved municipalities thousands of crores. And we treated them as invisible. ScrapUncle saw what we missed: not a waste crisis, but a collection crisis. In 2015, when most saw garbage piles in tier-2 cities, Mukul Chhabra saw 1.5 million unorganized workers with zero support, zero technology, zero dignity doing work that saved our economy billions. So he built infrastructure around them, not despite them. Started small. City by city. Pickup by pickup. By 2022: lakhs of daily collections, hundreds of crores in revenue. Then came the bigger vision of an AI-powered facility in Pune to bring structure to chaos. 50,000+ pickups. 2.5 million kg recycled. Fair pricing. Trained workers. Transparent weighing. This isn't just about recycling. It's about recognizing that India's informal sector isn't the problem — it's been the solution we refused to formalize. Real impact doesn't need fancy packaging. It needs someone willing to solve boring problems consistently. ThoughtProcess Films #WasteManagement #CircularEconomy #IndianStartups

🇳🇴 Norway shows the way: Separate collection alone won’t get us to EU recycling targets. That’s why Norway is investing in central sorting plants, which push plastic packaging recycling rates from an average of 36% (source-separated) up to 65–80%. Centrally sorted plastics? The quality is comparable to separately collected ones – and they can be washed before recycling. 💡 This makes even more sense in light of Norway’s waste incineration tax: 908 NOK/ton CO₂ (about €80), or 182 NOK/ton CO₂ for plants in the ETS (very few are). From 2025, emissions are calculated as 0.592 tonnes of fossil CO₂ per tonne of waste incinerated. That’s a real economic push for better sorting and recycling infrastructure. ♻️

What comes first? EPR or the recycling infrastructure? It goes hand in hand. Well-performing EPR systems need well-performing waste management infrastructure. When Landbell Group’s consultants – led by Christophe Pautrat, Aneta Zych and Wassim CHAABANE – deliver EPR advisory projects in developing countries, they sometimes hear that there are no funds to build the necessary infrastructure, especially for waste with no intrinsic value… so should EPR implementation wait? Back in the 90s in Germany, EPR for packaging was introduced because landfills were overfilling, municipal budgets were strained, and the existing recycling infrastructure was inadequate. The advent of EPR supported the development of the recycling industry in Germany, encouraging private investment by making EPR funds available and enforcing ambitious targets. Today, Germany has around 500 recycling plants, almost 200 are dedicated to plastics. While facilities for PET bottles are common globally, this is not the case for multilayered packaging or lightweight foils in countries with no EPR in place. Setting and enforcing collection and recycling targets for less attractive waste streams encourages private investment in waste management infrastructure. Enforced targets create a solid basis for investment because collectors gain confidence that what they collect will be paid for by recyclers. Recyclers get access to waste in desired quantities and can trust their costs will be covered by the EPR fees. By directing funding to management of waste regardless of its intrinsic value, EPR finances self-sustaining waste management ecosystems and helps developing countries achieve circularity. So, our advice is: don’t wait for the development of infrastructure, EPR creates the means to do it. #epr #plastics #recycling