Meet the players fighting plastic scourge in SEA

Southeast Asian countries throw away an estimated US$6 billion every year in recoverable or recyclable single-use plastics.

That figure’s set to soar as environmental priorities get sidetracked by health concerns around the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

For Southeast Asia, the deluge of plastic waste is a pressing environmental and health risk, as well as a lost opportunity to tap into the circular economy. But innovators are gradually waking up to the possibilities, and their solutions could be the key to solving the crisis.

Can this green gold rush also help Southeast Asia finally kick its plastic habit? In this visual story, Tech in Asia highlights the region’s nascent ecosystem of plastic waste startups.

The rise of plastic alchemists

Most of the 47 startups tackling plastic waste identified by Tech in Asia and The Incubation Network, a Singapore-based impact initiative, reside in just four out of eleven ASEAN member states.

Players in the region operate across all stages of the plastic waste life cycle but mainly fall into two major categories:

• Alternative plastics developers like Evoware, an Indonesian seaweed bioplastics firm, and Circlepac, a Malaysia-based compostable packaging manufacturer.
• Repurposing and recycling solutions providers such as Magorium, a Singapore green construction firm, and Upp, a Vietnam-based plastics upcycler.

Most of these firms are also relatively young, with 77.1% of them having been founded after 2015. The drop in the number of new plastic waste startups in 2020 could partly be explained by shifting priorities amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Plastic waste is “one of the most present and urgent environmental problems in Southeast Asia,” says Simon Baldwin, global head of circularity for impact accelerator SecondMuse and Singapore-based impact initiative The Incubation Network.

Is the plastic wave too big to tame?

Are these solutions enough to stem the tide?