Plastic with Purpose: Creating a Sustainable Circular Economy for Plastic Waste in Vietnam

Plastic with Purpose (PwP) project’s vision has been to cultivate plastic waste recycling as a profitable venture while reducing the flow of plastic waste into natural environments in coastal cities of Vietnam. The tangible project objectives included (1) Increasing the profit of formal and informal actors in the plastic waste ecosystem in the project area by 25%. (2) Ethical collection, processing, and selling of 2,700 metric tons of ocean-bound plastic waste using responsible business practices. (3) Improving the plastic recovery rate from 15% on all plastic types to 35% in project areas. (4) Increasing investment in plastic waste circular economy in project areas from 0 to 3,000,000 DKK to support the growth and stability of plastic water recycling businesses. The project was implemented in Da Nang city of Vietnam.

The project was originally a partnership among: 1) iDE as administrative partners, 2) Oceanworks (OW) as key commercial partner, a US-based company aiming to drive recycled plastic offtake and reduce demand for virgin plastic whose wide range of products are sold globally, and 3) ReForm Plastic (RF), the second commercial partner, a one-stop solution provider for difficult to recycle materials, supporting interested entities around the world with the collection, processing, and recycling of these materials. While OW’s main activities focused on the uptake of high-value recyclable plastics, RF’s business model focused on low- and no-value plastics.

Despite the challenges encountered during the life of the project that caused delays to the implementation, the partnership has created lasting impacts in the Da Nang plastic recycling market and supported the development of the two commercial partners’ businesses in Vietnam, with crucial catalysts to this success being the establishment of The Collector Network, a benefits platform for informal waste workers, and the piloting of the Master Aggregator model that served as the connection point between the informal value chain and established commercial partners.

The project helped create a 40.1% increase in profit earned by the end of April 2024 across all market actors connected to the project, over-achieving the target of 25%. Additionally, the project has improved the livelihoods of 430 total staff from plastic actors. This result significantly contributed to improving and enhancing the working environments and conditions of plastic waste actors which aimed to create a sustainable circular economy in Vietnam. By the project’s end in April 2024, the project supported plastic waste actors to recover 2,400 MT of plastics throughout intervention areas. The project contributed to increasing the plastic waste recovery rate in Da Nang from 15% to 41.7% of recovery rate on all plastic waste in the project intervention area. The partnership attracted 3,051,432 DKK of investment from the consortium and external investments from other organizations to support The Collector Network and the Master Aggregator (MA). 

Additionally, the project created a keystone opportunity for OW and RF to collaborate together under OW’s newly developed IMPAC+ product, which supports the reclamation of low value plastic from the environment under a plastic credits framework. Oceanworks IMPAC+ is a per kg reclamation subsidy designed to incentivize the reclamation and proper disposal of plastic waste that would not have been recovered and/or recycled in the absence of IMPAC+ funds. ReFrom Plastics serves as the on-the-ground implementing partner for IMPAC+ in Vietnam, working through the project developed Master Aggregator to support the informal plastics value chain in Da Nang.

As the partnership ended in April 2024, the commercial partners have continued engaging in the market framework set up by the project, including the continued operation of TCN, continued support and investment into the MA, continued purchase orders in Da Nang under the Impac+ program, and continued connection of the MA to recyclers, and identification of more recyclers for OW in Vietnam. Additionally, the commercial partners plan to take the market system linkages and operating mechanism set up by the project and integrate them with the new Extended Producer Responsibility regime passed in Vietnam, ensuring the sustainability of the project’s efforts.

The partnership was nominated for the 2024 P3 Impact Award in April 2024, created by Concordia and its partners, the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Global Partnerships and the University of Virginia Darden School of Business Institute for Business in Society. The partnership was selected as one of the finalists and were invited to participate in the 2024 Concordia Annual Summit in the US in September.