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Circuar Economy & Waste
123
Companies
10.7%
OF ASEAN-6
1,148
TOTAL COMPANIES IN ASEAN-6
Top Stories in 2026
The scale of the opportunity is larger than any single reform. Plastics alone illustrate it: recycling all of Southeast Asia and South Asia's mismanaged plastic waste could cut emissions by more than 200 million tonnes by 2030. More than 75% of the material value of that plastic is lost, the equivalent of US$6 billion a year in Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand alone.
The cost of not fixing this falls on the public purse as much as the environment: in Malaysia, waste collection and public cleansing alone consume up to 80% of some local authorities' expenditure.
The sector is shifting from a waste management problem into a resource and safety one. How it navigates that shift, on formal infrastructure, or on an informal workforce it has not protected, will determine how resilient it becomes. In other words, this is a question of inclusion as much as capacity.
1
Extended producer responsibility is starting to function as a funding mechanism.
Extended producer responsibility (EPR) has been on every circular economy roadmap in the region for close to a decade. In 2025-26, it started to function as the funding mechanism it was designed to be. The Philippines is the clearest proof: national plastic recovery reached 56% in 2025, surpassing the Recycling Association's goals for the second year running. By January 2026, 1,017 obliged companies had registered 201 EPR programmes.
Vietnam’s EPR has covered electrical and electronic products since 2025 and adds road vehicles from 2027, with Decree 110/2026 now setting the rates. Like Singapore's e-waste scheme, it goes beyond the packaging-only approach. Indonesia is at the rollout stage under its 9R Circular Economy Roadmap, with 8 plastic-sector roadmaps in active implementation. Malaysia has begun a voluntary EPR phase in 2026 and plans to make it mandatory from 2030.
Climate★★★
Economic★★★
Social★★★
EPR Compliance and Verification Infrastructure
National EPR portals can handle online registration. However, proof of recovery still rests on documents from collectors and recyclers, such as receipts, weighbridge slips and certificates. In Vietnam or the Philippines, these are checked after by an external auditor or a regulator, rather than traced from source.
- EPR fee management, validation and reconciliation software
- Verified recycled content traceability platforms giving brand owners defensible chain-of-custody evidence for their Scope 3 claims
- PRO aggregation services for Tier 2 brand owners not yet in formal compliance (for example, under Indonesia's roadmap and Malaysia's Blueprint)
- Chain-of-custody tools addressing specific pain points like low collection quality and contamination
EPR-funded Recovery Systems
Fee income is steadier than grants or aid, which is starting to make previously unfinanceable collection and recycling infrastructure investible. However, Vietnam's fund has not yet paid their recyclers, and the Philippines has no pooled fee.
- City-level collection-and-aggregation networks plugging into existing plants
- Informal sector formalisation platforms, folding waste pickers and waste bank operators into EPR fee flows
- Battery and panel recovery infrastructure capturing end-of-life batteries and PV panels
- Smart bin and contamination detection software feeding new automated sorting capacity such as Singapore’s Tuas Nexus materials recovery facility
2
Landill methane is emerging as a climate story in its own right.
A series of deadly landfill collapses in early 2026 has turned Southeast Asia's ageing landfills from a background waste problem into a visible public safety crisis. The same unstable, unmanaged sites are also significant methane emitters: an April 2026 UCLA Law Emmett Institute study, using Carbon Mapper's Tanager-1 satellite and NASA's EMIT instrument, ranked Bantargebang in Indonesia the world's second largest landfill methane source (6.3 tonnes/hour).
Investor and policy attention is beginning to treat landfill gas as a distinct climate category in its own right, rather than folding it into general waste management. The case for cleaning up landfills has moved from sanitation to climate finance: Indonesia's Danantara waste-to-energy programme is now sized at ~US$5 billion across 25 cities and 62 districts. These divert fresh waste from landfill, but do little for the methane already coming off legacy dumpsites.
Climate★★★
Economic★★★
Social★★★
Methane Measurement and Abatement Infrastructure
Satellite disclosure makes landfill methane individually trackable. However, the monitoring, retrofit, and treatment is still underdeveloped.
- Satellite and drone-based methane monitoring services for the region's landfill stock
- Landfill gas-to-energy retrofits across sites such as Indonesia's 343-site list (Indonesia Bebas Sampah 2029) and Malaysia's non-sanitary un-retrofitted landfills (dump sites)
- Leachate treatment as a service, addressing weak existing capacity in Indonesia and the Philippines
- Decentralised in-vessel anaerobic digestion for hawker centres, wet markets and food court chains, already piloted in Singapore
- Structural and slope stability monitoring for active landfill sites
Methane Transition Financing
Verification is becoming as important as measurement capacity itself. Landfill gas credits already exist in the region, but there has been little independent proof that credited sites capture what they claim.
- Methane credit issuance and registry software converting satellite-detected plumes into project-specific, credit-grade documentation
- Ground validation services calibrating satellite methane readings against on-site sensors
- Digital MRV platforms for waste-to-energy and landfill gas-to-energy operators
- Marketplace and matching platforms connecting verified landfill methane credits to corporate offtake buyers
- Chain-of-custody and verification tools spanning satellite methane data, EPR compliance and recycled content claims
3
Formalisation is raising questions about who gets left behind.
Every circular economy report on this region has a paragraph about informal waste pickers, and it rarely changes from year to year. What changes in 2026 is that landfill closures, EPR fee flows and new collection networks run through the millions of informal waste workers in the region (2 to 3.7 million in Indonesia alone) whose livelihoods sit at that point in the chain.
Three models are visible, with different outcomes. The Philippines' compliance-led model routes EPR fees through producer-responsibility organisations into local-level collection that pays informal collectors as participants. Vietnam's market-led network has run outside formal EPR for decades. For Indonesia, the shift from open dumping to a controlled landfill at Bantargebang means livelihoods actively at risk. No detailed transition plan has been published.
Climate★★★
Economic★★★
Social★★★
Systems to Formalise Workers
The informal workers are the region's collection infrastructure. There are apps that already register and provide payments these workers. The challenge is linking waste management records to the audit trail EPR schemes need.
- Digital registration and collection verification apps, letting operators log and prove collected volumes, routing them directly into EPR fee flows
- Mobile digital ID and e-wallet infrastructure paying collectors through PRO-routed funds
- Route optimisation and digital dispatch tools for informal collectors, adapting gig-logistics app design to raise per-shift earnings while generating the volume data EPR reconciliation needs
- Micro-lending and equipment financing platforms for informal collectors and small aggregator businesses, financing handcarts, sorting equipment, and e-bikes
Tech-enabled Services for Workers in Transition
Even well-designed formalisation will displace workers. The current tools to manage that transition are often manual and paper-based. The opportunity is to build digital, data-driven tools for workers moving out of the informal system.
- Job-matching platforms connecting workers displaced by landfill closures to roles opening up in the formal collection and recycling economy
- Wearable and sensor-based occupational safety monitoring for waste workers at active sites, flagging gas exposure, heat stress and structural risk in real time
- Mobile survey and GIS-mapping tools letting municipalities and NGOs count and geolocate informal workforces accurately
- Digital savings, micro-insurance and portable benefits apps for workers moving between informal and formal status
4
Recycling capacity is outpacing the feedstock needed to run it.
Through 2024, the standard explanation for why the region's circular economy was not delivering pointed at policy and financing: EPR was undefined, recycled content mandates were absent, and project finance was unavailable. By 2026, food-grade PET plants are running in Cavite, Philippines, and Pasuruan, Indonesia; a chemical recycling plant is due at Pengerang, Malaysia; and a new sorting facility has opened in Tuas, Singapore.
There is a harder, more capital-intensive problem: collection and aggregation. Plants now compete for the same collected material, much of which is not aggregated to the quality or volume they assume. Vietnam recycled only ~10-15% of its waste pre-EPR. The Philippine materials recovery facilities serve only under half of all barangays, more than two decades after the law first required them. Project STOP in Banyuwangi, Indonesia offers the clearest model yet for aggregation at sub-national scale, covering more than half a million people.
Climate★★★
Economic★★★
Social★★★
Collection and Aggregation Infrastructure
One plastics challenge is recycling. The harder challenge is gathering and sorting the waste. The new plants coming online are showing just how weak that collection system still is.
- City-level collection-and-aggregation networks
- Traceability software giving brand owners and plant operators visibility into feedstock quality and volume before material reaches the gate
- Smart collection platforms using incentives and gamification, ideally feeding verified volumes into EPR fee flows
- Lightweight digital logging and payment layer for existing waste pickers and junk shops, turning informal collection into a source of verified data
Feedstock Standardisation and Verification
Without common quality standards, feedstock from different collection systems is not fungible across plants. This limits how efficiently the region's new capacity can be used.
- RDF and SRF quality standards and certification services, filling a gap that currently constraints feedstock standardisation for chemical recycling in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand¹⁰
- Feedstock grade sorting and quality verification technology, closing the gap between collected volume and the commercial grade material plants¹¹
- Utilisation monitoring and gate fee pressure analytics tracking⁴
Country Distribution
Where the 123 startups in this sector are headquartered across ASEAN-6.
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