Question & AnswerQ&A (Republic Act No. 11898)
Republic Act No. 11898 shall be known as the "Extended Producer Responsibility Act of 2022."
The State adopts a systematic, comprehensive and ecological solid waste management program that includes integrating public participation, strengthening environmental education, and institutionalizing the extended producer responsibility mechanism for efficient waste management and product lifecycle accountability.
Extended producer responsibility (EPR) refers to the environmental policy approach that requires producers to be environmentally responsible throughout the life cycle of a product, especially its post-consumer or end-of-life stage.
Obliged enterprises are product producers required to implement an EPR program, specifically large enterprises generating plastic packaging waste, excluding micro, small, and medium enterprises unless their total assets exceed a certain threshold.
Covered plastic packaging includes sachets, labels, laminates, rigid plastic packaging, plastic bags (including single-use), and polystyrene used to carry, protect, or pack goods for transportation, distribution, and sale.
The recovery targets are: 20% by end of 2023, 40% by end of 2024, 50% by end of 2025, 60% by end of 2026, 70% by end of 2027, and 80% by end of 2028 and each year thereafter.
Fines range from at least 5 million pesos to 20 million pesos depending on the offense number, and may include automatic suspension of business permits. Failure to meet recovery targets also incurs fines or twice the cost of recovery and diversion of the footprint or its shortfall, whichever is higher.
The NSWMC oversees the implementation of solid waste management including EPR programs, composed of government and private sector representatives, and supervises the National Ecology Center for technical and registry support.
The National Ecology Center facilitates training, manages solid waste data, promotes recycling markets, maintains the EPR registry, monitors compliance of obliged enterprises, develops auditing models, and assesses waste for inclusion in the EPR scheme.
A PRO is an organization voluntarily formed or authorized by obliged enterprises to establish a viable platform for implementing their EPR programs, complying with standards on structure, membership, duties, financing, cooperation, and reporting.