Abstract Body

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes have been around since the 1990s as a policy to help relief the increasing demand of garbage disposal. Waste is now far more problematic than just an ever-expanding by-product of urbanization; it is becoming a global crisis that requires for reimagination and transformation of our consumption patterns. Viewed by many emerging countries in Asia as a customizable cure-all to solve the growing plastic pollution problem, EPR schemes are rapidly developed by numerous nations that are evolving from being developing countries to middle-income ones almost equally as rapidly. If unresolved, the plastic pollution problem would result in the aggravation of several environmental and socioeconomic crises, including the marine litter disaster and oversaturation of urban waste disposal channels. Aside from the fact that "polluter pays" concept continue to play central roles in in other successful pollutant-based policies, EPR schemes are also widely accepted by the producers themselves, all of whom cognizant of the plastic pollution crisis, but many of whom unwilling or unable to reinvent their plastic value chains to replace their plastic contents.

Lessons have been learned in the West, especially in Northern and Central Europe, as EPR schemes have been repeatedly implemented and revised. The oldest EPR scheme in Germany is still being revised till recently since its launch in the mid-1990s - will its counterparts in Asia also require this much time to be finetuned and effective towards boosting recycling rates and reducing plastic pollution? This paper analyzes the promises and pitfalls of EPR schemes and how Asia's own upcoming schemes in India, Viet Nam, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Hong Kong can leverage EPR schemes to find solutions to the plastic pollution that is choking up cross-boundary bodies of water.