Highlighting a critical paradigm shift in Southeast Asia’s combat against marine and terrestrial plastic waste, this report establishes a comprehensive strategic roadmap for scaling reuse and refill models across Southeast Asia. Covering six key ASEAN nations: Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam, the report evaluates the systemic barriers currently hindering non-disposable alternatives, ranging from unpriced single-use externalities to fragmented regulatory landscapes.
The Reuse Realized report by Perpetual serves as an actionable guide for governments, businesses, investors, and civil society organisations seeking to eliminate single-use plastic packaging in Southeast Asia through scaled reuse and refill ecosystems.
Synthesising research and field data from across six ASEAN member states, the study identifies four primary structural barriers: unpriced environmental externalities, misaligned policies, investor hesitancy, and a lack of pre-competitive collaboration. To address these challenges, the study outlines high-impact priority opportunities, spanning returnable bottled beverage prefill, public drinking water stations, bulk staple goods refill in micro-retail stores, and prefilled fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG)—that collectively hold the potential to avoid over 30 billion single-use plastic bottles and 319 billion sachets annually.
