Packaging World delves deep into the work of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste in this exclusive interview with the organization’s president and chief executive officer, Jacob Duer.
Jacob Duer, President and CEO, Alliance to End Plastic Waste
President and CEO of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste Jacob Duer shares details on the many projects supported by the organization to transform the global plastics ecosystem, as well as perspectives on single-use plastics and the Global Plastics Treaty.
Packaging World:
Can you talk a bit about your background and what led you to your leadership position at the Alliance to End Plastic Waste?
Jacob Duer:
My career has been dedicated mainly to policy work, specifically around the environment and sustainable development, both of which are directly related to the Alliance’s goal to transform the global plastics ecosystem.
For the past 20 years, I was with the United Nations (UN) in a variety of roles, most notably, leading the Chemicals and Health Branch of the UN Environment Programme, the secretariat of the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM), and the intergovernmental negotiating process that led to the adoption and entry into force of the Minamata Convention on Mercury, which is a globally legally binding instrument to eliminate mercury pollution.
The UN aims to address endemic challenges around the world, from child literacy to food scarcity. It also serves as proof that intergovernmental and industry collaboration is the cornerstone of problem-solving. This is why I joined the Alliance. I believe that only by working directly with the plastic value chain and building on the experience, know-how, and perspective of industries, governments, financial institutions, communities, and civil society will we be able to make a real and measurable impact in addressing the plastic waste challenge. Together, we can develop ground-breaking solutions that are not just better for the environment, but also socially responsible and economically viable.
How did the Alliance come about? How has it grown since it was established?
The Alliance is a global non-profit started in 2019 by engaged business leaders with a mission to help end plastic waste entering the environment. Today, we convene more than 70 companies across the plastic value chain, including producers and users of plastic, as well as converters, packaging companies, recyclers, and waste management companies.
To advance our mission, we work with governments, industry, civil society, academia, development institutions, financial institutions, and others to design solutions, recycle, and introduce more circular models such as refill and reuse, and combine those solutions with infrastructure development and investment in technology and innovation.
In the Global South, billions of people still bury, dump, or openly burn their waste because they have no or limited access to waste management infrastructure and services. Within Southeast Asia, the Alliance directly diverts plastic waste from the environment and landfills, co-creating integrated waste management solutions with local governments to move communities up the waste management hierarchy.
In the Global North, much of our work focuses on pioneering the innovation needed to create more circular plastic economies. This includes investing in intelligent waste sorting, incentivizing new solutions to recycle a broader range of plastics, and scaling reusable packaging systems.
Think of the Alliance as a global laboratory that allows everyone to share solutions and lessons openly. In just over three years, we have supported well over 50 projects across the world, reducing over 38,000 tonnes [approximately 42,000-plus tons] of unmanaged plastic waste. This is despite interruptions caused by the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.
What is the Alliance’s stance on plastics—in particular on single-use plastic packaging?
Measures across the entire lifecycle of plastic are essential and urgent to achieve a circular plastic economy. The reality is that plastic is a material ever-present in modern life and serves a purpose in essential industries such as medical packaging and food safety. It is the increasing prevalence of single-use plastics and their tendency to be littered after a short period of use, combined with the mismanagement of the resulting waste, that pose challenges the Alliance seeks to address.
We work on solutions that include improving design for reuse and recyclability, supporting clear labeling on packaging around recycling, and informing consumers on how to recycle properly. The Alliance also supports projects on reuse and refill models, which will result in the reduction of single-use plastics.
If I understand correctly, the role of the Alliance is to raise funds, select new innovations and technology to advance recycling and the circular economy, and foster collaboration to get these projects off the ground. Is the Alliance also an active participant in the projects? How much of its funding comes from its members?
Yes, these are all parts of our work. The Alliance is catalyzing impact by finding, further developing, and de-risking solution models intended to end plastic waste leakage into the environment. However, we can’t solve the plastic waste issue alone. Our work needs to inspire others to also act, to replicate and scale solutions that work.
As an independent non-profit organization, we foster collaboration across said value chain to develop infrastructure and invest by providing grants or concessional loans in systems to improve the collection and management of plastic waste.
A sizable percentage of our projects deal with waste management, which is an important component to achieving circularity. To grow recycling, waste management systems that allow for proper disposal, sorting, and processing are required.
In China, the Alliance has supported the installation of 1,400 smart bins from Lovere to address the plastic waste challenge at a municipal level. The bins use cameras to identify recyclable materials to reward consumers with credits tied to the country’s WeChat app.One example is our partnership with enviro-tech company Lovere and its smart bins for recycling. In China, the Alliance has supported the installation of 1,400 smart bins across Chengdu and Xi’An to address the plastic waste challenge at a municipal level. The Lovere smart bins use cameras to identify recyclable materials such as plastics, paper, metal, and textiles to reward consumers with credits tied to the country’s ubiquitous WeChat app. To date, over 3,400 tonnes [approximately 3,700-plus tons] of plastic waste from these bins have been collected and sent to sorting centers, where they are separated into 72 individual streams before being sold to recycling companies.
To my earlier description of the Alliance as a global laboratory, beyond just funding or providing technical expertise to projects, the Alliance also uses the findings from these projects to develop what we call “solution models.” These solution models are developed with the intent to be replicable across multiple markets, after factoring in on-ground variables such as available resources, consumer behavior, existing waste management infrastructure, and more.
We already know from experience that there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to plastic pollution. Hence these solution models are intended to inform governments and private-sector players on the considerations and permutations to undertake when addressing uniquely local challenges.
To summarize, our objective is to develop, test, and scale solution models that prevent the leakage of plastic waste into the environment and advance a circular economy for plastics. Solution models must be environmentally beneficial, socially responsible, and economically viable.
Regarding financials, the majority of our funding comes from membership fees. From inception to the end of 2022, $225 million has been allocated to projects and mission-related activities. More specifics can be found in our latest Progress Report.
Where do the ideas for these projects come from? What are some of the criteria you look at when selecting a solution to invest in? Why are these measures important?
Similar to our diverse membership, we develop and implement projects across the entire plastics value chain through the lens of how they fit into our solution models.
The Alliance looks across the three tiers of waste management hierarchy, which are prevention, such as design models to enhance reuse, refill, or easier recycling; waste management, including collection, sorting, treatment, and conversion; and enablers, which include policy and business models, capability-building ecosystems, and innovations like renewables and data management.
We source projects based on the solution models they help fulfill, the latter of which were identified from our Plastic Waste Management Framework and market needs. From there, we estimate their projected medium-to-long-term impact, prioritizing the scale of the problem to be addressed, their ease of implementation or replication across various markets, and supporting factors such as policy frameworks and capital allocations.
These measures enable us to maximize available resources that will quantifiably address some of the most pressing aspects of plastic waste management while being mindful of the replicability and scalability challenge when exported to other settings.
In your 2022 Progress Report, you talk about how gauging progress and success upon tonnage of plastics diverted from the environment and landfill doesn’t tell the whole story. Can you talk a bit more about this and how you developed the metrics by which you will now gauge the Alliance’s impact? How will these metrics better provide a full picture?
Beyond tonnage diverted or where recycling value was captured from, social responsibility is also a major component in how we evaluate each project’s success. Our experience tells us that in many emerging economies, informal waste pickers play an integral role in addressing municipal waste. It is incredibly important that any infrastructure or programs we put in place to address waste management supports, integrates, and fairly compensates waste pickers for their contributions.
As a direct result of our efforts, over 4,200 jobs were created or received improved working conditions, the latter specific to informal waste pickers. Their communities have also benefited, with more than 4.3 million people now gaining access to new or improved waste management.
On to a more technical perspective, developing and demonstrating solutions requires the nurturing of individual projects, while considering how to create the enabling conditions for the future replication or scaling with or by others. In addition, there is a significant time lag between initiating projects and the generation of positive impact on the environment and affected communities, typically in the range of two to three years, but it can be up to five years. However, that depends on the type of project and the local circumstances.
Meaningful measurement of the Alliance’s impact progress, therefore, requires balancing among three types of metrics. These are indirect metrics, which measure current activities that will lead to an increased impact in perspective; forward-looking metrics, which project future impact; and outcome metrics, which measure the actual impact achieved today.
Building on this experience, we have defined seven topics to transparently measure and demonstrate our impact. The first is developing replicable solution models accompanied by a blueprint that can be successfully applied by others in the plastic ecosystem. This metric ensures solutions are technically feasible and replicable, economically sustainable, and socially and environmentally acceptable.
The second is enabling the entire plastics ecosystem to bring about rapid and large-scale replication of effective solutions. This requires aligning and empowering public and private-sector stakeholders to drive a collective understanding of the policies, systems, and infrastructure needed to meet the scale of the challenge. The third involves mobilizing financial capital from private and public institutions towards major investment in infrastructure and systems transformation that reduce environmental plastic pollution and advance plastic circularity.
The next topic is reducing cumulative unmanaged waste through additional collection, proper disposal, and reduction schemes in high-leakage geographies. The fifth is capturing value from waste through the reporting of the total volume of plastic waste processed into useful raw materials and the aggregated nominal annual input capacity of facilities that have been added, or are under construction, for the valorization of the plastic waste supply and its suitability for processing.
After that is creating social benefit through increasing household access to basic or improved waste collection and recycling systems, as well as the creation or significant improvement of jobs in terms of wages, benefits, and working conditions for the informal waste sector. And last is mitigating climate impact through the adoption of circular solutions that enable a significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Such solutions should not only consider recovery and recycling, but also upstream activities to reduce, reuse, or substitute fossil-based plastics or virgin plastic feedstock.
What are a couple of examples of projects that the Alliance has funded that you believe will have wide-reaching and scalable impact?
Globally, the End Plastic Waste Innovation Platform has been a very successful accelerator program for startups to-date. The collaboration was launched with California-based technology accelerator Plug and Play in 2020. The platform fosters startups from across the plastic value chain to transform plastic waste management around the world.
Through this program, over 160 startups dedicated to ending plastic waste across the entire value chain have been accelerated across the eight hubs in Johannesburg, Paris, Riyadh, Sao Paolo, Shanghai, Silicon Valley, Tokyo, and Singapore. More than $185 million in capital has been invested and deployed into these startups, with a resulting 220 commercial pilots in progress.
The Bersih Indonesia: Eliminasi Sampah Plastik supports Indonesia’s efforts to achieve near-zero leakage by 2040. Once fully operational, more than 2.6 million people are expected to benefit from end-to-end waste management services.On a more local level, the Bersih Indonesia: Eliminasi Sampah Plastik supports Indonesia's efforts to achieve near-zero leakage by 2040. Once fully operational, more than 2.6 million people are expected to benefit from end-to-end waste management services. The system will create an estimated 3,000 local jobs and aim to collect more than 300,000 tonnes [approximately 330,000 tons] of municipal solid waste annually, including up to 50,000 tonnes [approximately 55,000 tons] of plastic waste, targeting an annual recycling rate of over 60%.
A key element of the program is the establishment of a public utility, locally known as a Badan Layanan Umum Daerah (BLUD), operating under the regency’s Environment Department, a first in Indonesia’s waste management sector. Enabled by the Alliance’s funding, the BLUD will assume full responsibility for the operations and maintenance of the waste management system and is critical to ensuring the long-term financial sustainability of the initiative.
Editor’s Note: Among the other projects funded by the Alliance include Digimarc’s HolyGrail 2.0 program, a pilot project with the objective to prove the technical viability of digital watermarks for accurate sorting of packaging waste, and a new facility from flexible film recycler Myplas in Rogers, Minn., that promises circular film-to-film recycling.
The Digital Watermarks Initiative HolyGrail 2.0 is a pilot project with the objective to prove the technical viability of digital watermarks for accurate sorting of packaging waste as well as the economic viability of the business case at large scale.
International coordination between governments, environmental organizations, industry leaders, and civil society is indisputably necessary to tackle the magnitude of the plastic waste challenge. While other environmental challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity degradation, and ozone depletion are addressed through international frameworks, the global plastic waste challenge has no equivalent yet. A well-structured global agreement on plastic pollution would help to harmonize metrics and reporting requirements for plastic waste and could reduce the complexity for governments and businesses of addressing plastic waste by creating a more harmonized policy framework. It could also help to mobilize capital via new, strong financial mechanisms to tackle the challenge and thereby accelerate innovation and the development and deployment of solutions that enhance resource efficiency.
Importantly, we believe any agreement should grant countries the flexibility to develop National Action Plans and measures to eliminate plastic waste leakage and promote a circular economy for plastics. Ideally, this legal instrument should adopt an inclusive approach that takes into consideration national and local needs and capacities as well as promotes cooperation among local communities, the informal sector, municipalities, civil society, the scientific community, and the private sector.
This would allow nations to develop responses that are most appropriate to their national and local context while incentivizing and prioritizing the collection, sorting, and recycling of plastic waste.
As we talked about earlier, creating solutions to this complex challenge requires system-wide collaboration and collective action by governments, businesses, civil society, financial institutions, and academia at the global, national, and local levels.
At these multilateral fora, the Alliance participates as an observer to understand national and local needs and requirements and share our specific experience, expertise, and scientific knowledge about waste management and recycling solutions. Upon request, we also support governments and other stakeholders in articulating the on-the-ground realities of existing policy decisions.
What do you see as some of the largest challenges facing the globe in terms of plastic pollution/leakage and moving toward a circular economy?
Today, 3 billion people still lack access to proper waste management services. Much of the waste generated ends up buried, openly burned, or dumped. Solving just the waste management component of this challenge will cost an estimated $1.2 trillion. And it’s hardly a panacea for such a multifaceted issue that impacts almost every single person and industry on the planet.
From an economic perspective, expenditure in adequate waste management has traditionally not been high on the priority list for developing nations with more pressing concerns. However, we see that starting to change. Many governments have until now simply lacked the capital to invest in existing waste management models. At the same time, the economics of waste management and recycling have been perceived as challenging.
We recognize that beyond waste management and recycling, there is so much more that needs to be done. This is evident when you examine our project portfolio of solution models, which run the gamut from building recycling infrastructure and piloting a reusable food-delivery-packaging system to driving behavioral-change program at a local-community level.
There is also a social responsibility component to policymaking, namely, ensuring a just transition that is as fair and inclusive as possible to informal waste pickers.
The Johannesburg-based African Reclaimers Organization (ARO) is a non-profit that unites 6,000 waste pickers under a single umbrella to represent and advocate for their needs.One example of this is our work with the Johannesburg-based African Reclaimers Organization (ARO). Millions in the Global South rely on waste management for their livelihood, such as those who scour waste heaps to collect and sell PET bottles. ARO is a non-profit that unites 6,000 waste pickers under a single umbrella to represent and advocate for their needs. These informal workers are a critical component to keeping the streets clean, but they work long hours under difficult and often dangerous conditions, earning very little.
Through our collaboration with ARO, waste pickers now have a new safe and hygienic sorting center, where plastic waste is compacted on-site with mobile balers, making them easier and more economical to transport. Previously, waste was brought to a makeshift base of operations under a highway overpass.
The project helps to divert hundreds of tonnes of plastic waste from entering the environment or landfills and provides more than 4,000 people access to improved waste management services.
How do you respond to recent criticisms that the Alliance has not made enough progress towards its goals?
The challenge to end plastic waste leakage in the environment is huge, but not insurmountable. Since our inception, we have been working to create solutions that will make a positive impact and a meaningful difference for communities around the world in the long term.
Earlier, I mentioned that over 38,000 tonnes [approximately 42,000 tons] of plastic waste have been reduced by our efforts, but on top of this, there have been an additional 39,000 tonnes [approximately 43,000 tons] of plastic waste from which we have captured value, primarily through recycling. Upon the completion of the projects in our existing portfolio, we estimate that more than 156,000 tonnes [approximately 172,000 tons] of new recycling capacity per year will be made available.
The Alliance has done a lot, yet we also recognize there remains much to do. At the same time, I want to highlight that the Alliance is not the whole solution. Not one business, government, or organization can tackle the challenges alone, it will require all stakeholders to come together. It is the sum of the efforts of all the actors in the ecosystem that will help solve the problem of plastic leakage into the environment. PW
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In China, the Alliance has supported the installation of 1,400 smart bins from Lovere to address the plastic waste challenge at a municipal level. The bins use cameras to identify recyclable materials to reward consumers with credits tied to the country’s WeChat app.
