Vietnam sets recycling rates per material with a pay-instead route, the Philippines fines missed plastic recovery targets, and Indonesia is replacing its producer roadmap for 2028

Three rules, three designs

The three instruments sit at different levels of law and were written for different jobs. Exhibit 2 sets them out. The tracker holds one rule per country: PR-VN-001 on the Vietnam page, PR-ID-001 on the Indonesia page and PR-PH-001 on the Philippines page of the SPI Regulation Tracker.

Two features cut across the table. Vietnam and the Philippines set national percentages that every obliged company must meet; Indonesia so far leaves the number to each producer’s plan inside a national goal. And only Vietnam offers a legal alternative to doing the work: paying the Fund instead of recycling.

Vietnam: who carries the duty under Decree 110/2026

Decree 110/2026/ND-CP details Article 54 of the Law on Environmental Protection on recycling of products and packaging, and Article 55 on collection and treatment of waste from products that are hard to recycle (Art. 1). It was signed in Hanoi on 1 April 2026 by a Deputy Prime Minister on behalf of the Prime Minister and printed in Official Gazette No. 229 of 19 April 2026.

Who. Article 3 defines producers and importers as a single term covering organisations that make products and packaging and those that import them, including importers from export-processing enterprises. Article 4.1 adds that where import is entrusted to an agent, the party responsible for the goods’ labelling carries the duty. For packaging, Article 4.2 covers the commercial packaging of food other than chewing gum, cosmetics, medicines, fertilisers, animal feed and veterinary products, soaps and cleaning products, and cement.

Who is out. Article 4.3 excludes goods that are exported, temporarily imported, re-exported or imported for research, study or testing; producers and importers whose revenue from the listed products is below 30 billion VND a year; and producers that take back their own packaging for refilling at or above the mandatory rate. Article 4.4 brings road vehicles in from 1 January 2027, which matters to packaging teams only as a sign that the list keeps growing.

Why a new decree. The Ministry of Industry and Trade explained on 14 April 2026 that Decree 08/2022, as amended by Decree 05/2025, set contribution duties but did not fully regulate how the money was managed and used, which caused practical problems. Decree 110 repeals Chapter VI and Appendices XXII and XXIII of Decree 08/2022 (Art. 22) and adds rules on support packages, provincial allocations and a separate pot for pesticide packaging. At the ministry forum it reported, the Viet Nam EPR Office described the contribution as a financial contribution to waste treatment rather than a tax or a fee.

Who runs it. The Ministry of Agriculture and Environment, formed in 2025 from the agriculture and environment ministries, operates the national EPR information system, sets Fs and leads implementation, advised by a National EPR Council. The Viet Nam Environment Protection Fund receives contributions and pays out support.

Vietnam: rates by material

Appendix I sets a mandatory recycling rate and a mandatory recycling specification for each packaging group. The specification matters as much as the rate: a tonne only counts if it is recycled into the listed output (Exhibit 3).

The rates themselves are not new. The environment ministry’s EPR portal listed the same packaging percentages for the first three years under Decree 08/2022 in its summary of 31 March 2022. What Decree 110 adds is the timing of change: under Article 5, rates are raised every three years, starting in 2029, and each rise may add no more than 10%. A producer may also recycle same-group packaging made by others, except imported scrap, industrial process waste and defective goods, and may carry recycling above the rate forward to later years.

Vietnam: the yearly cycle

The decree replaces the in-year cycle of Decree 08/2022 with one that closes after the obligation year. The Ministry of Industry and Trade’s explainer says companies may now complete the obligation by 31 March of the following year. Exhibit 4 shows the dates that recur each year.

A producer that chooses to pay does not file a recycling plan or results (Art. 7.2); it declares the amount on the national system before 1 April and pays before 20 April (Art. 8.3). A producer that recycles, in-house, through a contracted recycler, through a recycling responsibility organisation or in combination, registers its plan and reports prior-year results before 1 April (Art. 7.1). Self-recyclers and contracted recyclers need the relevant environmental permit, and an authorised organisation may not pass the task on (Art. 6).

Where the money goes. The Fund runs competitive support packages for recyclers and recycling responsibility organisations. A package for a packaging group is capped at 10 billion VND (Art. 12). The decree text gives the announcement of packages before 1 June to the Ministry and the close of applications to 1 July (Art. 14). Under Circular 24/2026/TT-BNNMT, reported by the Ministry on 17 June 2026, the Fund may keep a management fee from bank interest of up to 2% of recycling support disbursed and 0.5% of treatment support, provincial funds up to 1.5%, and interest earned to 31 December 2025 rolls into 2026 support.

Vietnam: the F = R x V x Fs contribution

Article 8.1 sets the contribution as F = R x V x Fs. R is the mandatory recycling rate from Appendix I, V is the mass placed on the market in the obligation year in kilograms, and Fs is the per-kilogram rate. Under Article 8.2 the Minister of Agriculture and Environment issues Fs for each product and packaging type and revises it every three years from 2029.

What SPI can state about Fs in VND is limited. Circular 07/2025/TT-BTNMT, issued on 28 February 2025 under the Decree 08/2022 regime, added Appendix IXa to Circular 02/2022/TT-BTNMT, titled as the reasonable recycling cost per unit of mass of product and packaging (Fs). SPI has not yet confirmed the per-kilogram values in that appendix from an official text, nor whether they carry over to obligation year 2026 under Decree 110 or will be reissued by the Ministry. A Ministry official said at a 2023 consultation that the amount a business pays follows F = R.V.Fs and applies only where it chooses to pay instead of organising recycling.

The formula still lets a buyer size the exposure before Fs is known, because R x V is the recycled mass the company would otherwise have to deliver. Exhibit 5 applies it to an illustrative basket.

The reading of the cap changes the answer by 82.2 tonnes in the high case, 278 against 195.8, so it is worth settling with counsel before 2029 budgets are fixed. On the base case the basket needs 28.1% more recycled mass in 2029 than in 2026. The last column shows that every 1,000 VND of Fs per kilogram adds 178 million VND to the basket’s contribution; once the Ministry’s Fs values are confirmed, the bill is that column times the Fs for each line, in VND.

Vietnam: the waste-treatment contribution

Article 55 products follow a different route. For products in Appendix II, producers and importers pay a waste-treatment contribution counted at the level of the direct packaging (Art. 9). The same 30 billion VND revenue exemption applies. Rates are revised every five years, with each change capped at 15% and the first change in 2031 (Art. 9.5). Exhibit 6 lists the rows that matter to packaging.

Pesticide packaging is the policy focus. At the ministry forum reported on 14 April 2026, officials said that more than 20% of pesticide packaging remains untreated despite more than 11,700 training classes and about 450,000 storage tanks built between 2022 and 2024. Decree 110 answers with a ring-fenced fund line for that stream.

Indonesia: P.75/2019 and the 30% goal

Indonesia’s producer rule is a regulation of the Minister of Environment and Forestry, P.75/2019 on the Roadmap for Waste Reduction by Producers. The BPK legal database records it as set in Jakarta on 18 October 2019, promulgated and in force on 5 December 2019 in State Gazette 2019 No. 1545, with status in force.

The target. Article 2 covers 2020 to 2029 and sets a waste reduction by producers of 30% compared with waste generation in 2029. The text sets no yearly percentages; Annex I gives yearly stages of planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and reporting instead.

Who. Article 3 names three sectors: manufacturing of food and beverages, consumer goods, and cosmetics and personal care; food and beverage services, meaning restaurants, cafes, caterers and hotels; and retail, from shopping centres and modern stores to traditional markets. Article 1 includes distributors of imported packaged goods in the definition of producer. Article 4 targets products, packaging and containers of plastic, aluminium cans, glass and paper that are hard to decompose, cannot be recycled or cannot be reused.

How. Producers prepare a roadmap with a baseline, product inventory and targets, provide take-back and collection points alone or with waste banks and recycling sites, monitor at least every six months (Art. 13) and report every year (Annex I). Article 21 has the Minister, governors and regents or mayors apply sanctions under other legislation, and Article 22 adds incentives and disincentives through publication of good or poor performance. The regulation sets no fee and no fine of its own.

Indonesia: the replacement draft

On 8 September 2026, KLH/BPLH told the House of Representatives’ Commission XII that it was revising the producer roadmap rule to make the EPR scheme clearer and more practical, and to bring importers of products and packaging into scope. Its release refers to the regulation as Permen LHK No. 75 of 2018; the instrument in the BPK database is P.75/2019. The ministry described a non-profit PRO, set up by producers, which would collect fees proportional to packaging volume and type and work with local governments and recycling facilities.

By 6 October 2026, when it held a public consultation, the ministry said the draft is a replacement regulation, not a revision, changing more than 50% of the content and structure of P.75/2019. Exhibit 8 compares the two.

The ministry’s timeline is enactment in November 2026, intensive socialisation until May 2027, producer registration, PRO formation and labels by the end of 2027, and full reduction duties from 2028. Public input was open on the ministry’s EPR Knowledge Portal until 9 October 2026.

The reason for the rewrite is in the uptake numbers (Exhibit 9).

SPI calculation: 45.8% of producers given guidance registered, 9.4% submitted a roadmap and 3.3% reported results; of those that submitted, 35.4% reported. Reported reduction rose 11.5%, from about 217,000 tonnes in 2024 to about 242,000 tonnes in 2025. The ministry’s 8 September release put national waste at 144,562 tonnes a day, which SPI multiplies to about 52.8 million tonnes a year, with 25% managed and about 36.59% reaching the environment; it describes a medium-term plan to reach full waste management by 2028.

The Philippines: RA 11898 and the footprint

Republic Act No. 11898, the Extended Producer Responsibility Act of 2022, consolidated Senate Bill No. 2425 and House Bill No. 10696. The Senate passed it on 23 May 2022 and the House on 26 May 2022, and it lapsed into law without the President’s signature on 23 July 2022. Section 15 makes it effective 15 days after complete publication; the Environmental Management Bureau’s FAQ gives the effective date as 12 August 2022.

Who. Section 44-B defines obliged enterprises as large enterprises that generate plastic packaging waste. Micro, small and medium enterprises under Republic Act No. 9501 are excluded but encouraged to join, unless enterprises sharing one brand, label or trademark together exceed the medium-enterprise asset ceiling, in which case all are obliged. The EMB FAQ gives that ceiling as PHP 100 million in total assets, and DENR cited a Department of Trade and Industry estimate of about 4,000 large enterprises in the country.

What. Section 44-C covers four kinds of plastic packaging: sachets, labels, laminates and other flexible packaging, single or multi-layer; rigid packaging for beverages, food, home, personal care and cosmetics, with caps, lids, cutlery, straws and signage; single-use bags at the point of sale; and polystyrene. Paper, glass and metal packaging are outside the targets.

How it is measured. Under DAO 2023-02, signed on 24 January 2023, the footprint is the weight in kilograms of plastic packaging by type or material form brought to market over a period of generally 12 calendar months (Sec. 16.3.2); in the first compliance year it rested on self-declaration, to be checked in the compliance audit. Offsetting is by type regardless of brand: flexibles cannot offset rigids and rigids cannot offset flexibles (Sec. 16.3.3.3). Each sworn plastic waste diversion certificate must be notarised (Sec. 16.3.3.5). Registration and annual compliance monitoring fees follow a schedule issued by the Bureau and go to an EPR Special Fund (Sec. 16.1.2); SPI has not yet confirmed the schedule’s PHP amounts.

Registration. Section 44-E requires obliged enterprises or their PROs to register EPR programs with the National Solid Waste Management Commission through DENR, listing packaging types and brands, the mode of implementation, the volume or weight placed on the market, targets, redesign and labelling measures and compliance status. DENR reported 709 enterprises with EPR plans as of September 2023, against the estimate of about 4,000 large enterprises. SPI has not yet confirmed later official registration or compliance counts.

The 2026 number is already fixed, because the 2025 footprint is history. Growth only moves the 2027 and 2028 rows, by 35 tonnes either way in 2027 and by 78 to 82 tonnes in 2028 on this basket. From the end of 2028 the 80% rate repeats each year.

The Philippines: fines and the double-cost rule

Section 49(g) of RA 9003, added by RA 11898, sets fines for failing to register a program under Section 44-E or to meet the targets in Section 44-F, heard by the Pollution Adjudication Board of DENR.

• First offence: PHP 5,000,000 to PHP 10,000,000.
• Second offence: PHP 10,000,000 to PHP 15,000,000.
• Third offence: PHP 15,000,000 to PHP 20,000,000, plus automatic suspension of the business permit until compliance.

For a missed recovery target, the enterprise pays those fines or twice the cost of recovery and diversion of the footprint or its shortfall, whichever is higher. The rule applies regardless of cause, including falsification and misdeclared footprints. The fine bands are therefore floors, not ceilings, for a large shortfall. Exhibit 11 shows where the double-cost rule takes over.

The table reads one way: the larger the shortfall, the lower the recovery cost at which exposure stops being the fine and becomes twice the cost. For a brand short by 1,000 tonnes, any recovery cost above PHP 5 a kilogram makes the double-cost figure the higher one against the first-offence top.

Section 9 of RA 11898 asks Congress to review the Act within five years of effectivity, which on the EMB date points to August 2027, with stricter targets, higher incentives or phase-outs of some single-use plastics among the options.

A framework: how each market closes the gap

SPI sorts the three systems on two tests a buyer can check: who sets the number, and what a company does when it falls short (Exhibit 12).

Read across, the region is converging on fixed targets and collective bodies, but on two different ideas of money. Vietnam’s money is a contribution that funds recycling through competitive packages; the Philippine money is a penalty that makes doing the work the cheaper path. Indonesia’s draft points to a third form, a PRO fee scaled by recyclability, closer to the European and Indian models. The China piece shows a fourth path in the region: standards and format limits rather than producer fees.