Closing the Gaps: Enabling Philippine SMEs to Adopt Circular Practices to Reduce Plastic Pollution

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are important actors across plastic packaging-intensive Philippine value chains. In 2023, the country had 114,675 SMEs employing 3.1 million people, about a third of employment in registered establishments (DTI, 2024). Yet circular economy policy is built around large producers, leaving SMEs outside the obligations, incentives, and guidance it creates.

The CIRCONOMICS (Circular Economics for Business Transformation) training workshop in Manila on 30 September 2025 shows that targeted capacity building works: participants’ weakest areas at baseline, extended producer responsibility (EPR) and policy awareness, improved most. It also shows its limits. Participants left better informed but still constrained by unaffordable finance, fragmented regulation, and missing recycling infrastructure.

Capacity building is necessary but not sufficient. The Philippines should simplify circular economy regulation for smaller firms, prioritise tax incentives and a dedicated SME financing window, invest in co-ordination and infrastructure, and treat capacity building as a complement to these measures rather than a substitute.