Business Needs Global Rules to end plastic pollution: An Indonesian perspective

This week I am honoured to be joining the Indonesian Delegation as an observer in Busan at INC-5, where nations will gather to agree a legally binding Global Treaty to end plastic pollution. It will be an immense task.

As a member of the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty, CCEP strongly supports the development of legally-binding global rules across the whole lifecycle of plastic products, underpinned by harmonised regulation, to accelerate the transition to a circular economy.

Some are concerned by this idea, seeing it as an increased burden that could hamper growth, particularly in emerging markets like Indonesia. However, done right, I believe that legally-binding global rules can provide a chance for businesses to scale proven solutions and support emerging markets in a just transition to formal waste infrastructure.

It is crucial that these rules apply across the whole lifecycle of plastics. We that there is currently just too much plastic in Indonesia that is not easy to recycle. According to a 2021 report by the World Bank, Indonesia generates approximately 7.8 million tons of plastic waste annually, and around 4.9 million tons of this is mismanaged.

This is why we must also focus on upstream measures such as product design, with a goal that all plastic can eventually be easily collected and recycled at scale as well as creating the right conditions for the scaling of waste infrastructure.

I’m deeply committed to inclusive, locally-relevant solutions that engage all stakeholders. At CCEP, we are taking voluntary action in Indonesia to support the collection and domestic recycling of beverage packaging, contributing to the establishment of community waste management and working towards a just transition for informal waste workers.

In 2020, we established two entities in partnership with Dynapack Asia: Amandina Bumi Nusantara (PT ABN) - Indonesia’s first food-grade rPET facility, and Mahija Parahita Nusantara Foundation - a non-profit ensuring responsible sourcing from waste collectors through community collection centres. In 2024, Mahija became an implementing partner of The Circulate Initiative to implement the Responsible Sourcing Initiative which aims to embed social responsibility standards across recycling supply chains.  

We are also working with multiple stakeholders to pilot a transformation of traditional waste banks, into sustainable community-based waste management that provides income opportunities and an entry point for separating waste at source, ensuring quality materials for recycling industries.

I am proud of the steps we are taking to address plastic pollution via voluntary and collaborative action. But to go further, we need to level the playing field and drive action across the whole lifecycle of plastic by all producers who place it on the market. For this we need enabling Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation to be included as a stand-alone provision in the Treaty.

We support The Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty policy ask for an obligation to introduce or advance targets and systems for collection, reuse and recycling at the national level, based on common definitions and key principles for Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations, and other policy instruments.

Well-designed EPR is instrumental to addressing plastic pollution. It supports design for circularity, higher collection and recycling system efficiency and increased transparency of material and financial flows by making outcomes the responsibility of all producers who place plastic on the market.

I hope the Treaty will also recognise the unique challenges and opportunities in countries like Indonesia and the need for extended stakeholder responsibility (ESR), an approach that facilitates EPR in emerging markets by ensuring alignment with broader stakeholders, and a collaborative approach. By engaging all stakeholders, especially the informal sector and communities, as partners, ESR unlocks locally-relevant solutions.

Our approach to ESR in Indonesia is via our Nona-Helix (Nine-Actors) model which recognises that systemic change requires collective action across multiple groups – such as government, industry, waste sector, NGOs, academics, religious leaders - in a framework of shared responsibility, with each playing a clear role: the government creates enabling policies and infrastructure; industry invests in collection and recycling; waste collectors are engaged as supply chain partners.

This approach, rooted in Indonesia’s ‘gotong royong’ culture of cooperation, has delivered promising results - from expanding collection to improving waste picker livelihoods. While designed for the Indonesian context, we believe Nona-Helix offers a valuable proof-of-concept for the kind of collaboration needed to realise a just circular economy transition in emerging markets.

I wish the Ministerial Delegates at INC-5 well for the intense days of negotiations that lie ahead.