Danone-Aqua Indonesia has registered with Verra’s Plastic Program
Danone-Aqua Indonesia has registered the first Indonesian plastic project with Verra’s Plastic Waste Reduction Program (Plastic Program). The Reciki: Valorization of Waste, Systematic Diversion from Landfill and Leakage project (Reciki Project) is a collaboration between Danone-Aqua Indonesia and PT. Reciki Solusi Indonesia (Reciki) and demonstrates how corporations can use Verra’s Plastic Program to measure the impact of their plastic waste collection efforts.
As the central component of Verra’s Plastic Program, the Plastic Standard is a global standard that allows for consistent accounting of various plastic collection and recycling activities. It drives investment into projects that increase the collection and/or recycling of plastic waste. The Plastic Program is claimed to enable the independent auditing of projects to determine the extent to which they have reduced plastic waste. It includes a robust set of requirements that address social and environmental safeguards, and ensure rigor and transparency through stakeholder consultations and documented monitoring, among others.
Through this project, Danone-Aqua Indonesia invests in material recovery facilities (MRFs, or TPSTs in Indonesian) to divert plastic waste from landfills. Reciki is a private waste management company that works with local governments to collect municipal solid waste from local households and businesses for recycling at the MRFs. Multisector partnerships such as this one and active participation from plastic producers play a critical role for the government of Indonesia to reach its goal of reducing marine plastic waste by 70 per cent by 2025.
In the Reciki Project, high-value materials are sorted, baled, and sold to large aggregators and/or directly to recyclers. The hard-to-recycle residual plastics are repurposed–they either will be transformed into construction material substitutes such as eco-planks and eco-beams or into fuels through Refuse-Derived Fuel.
The project currently includes two MRFs and will expand into additional facilities in Java and Bali over the next few years, focusing on areas where more than 80% of plastics are estimated to be mismanaged. The project is set to collect an average of 15,842t/a of plastic waste and will support community education on waste management.
Danone-Aqua Indonesia has developed this project as part of its #BijakBerplastik commitment to recover more plastic than it uses by 2025. In addition, Danone-Aqua has set circular packaging goals, including using 50% recycled content in its plastic bottles and making 100% of its plastic packaging reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025.
Verra is a nonprofit organisation that operates a leading carbon crediting program, the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Program, as well as other standards programs in environmental and social markets. Launched in February 2021, Verra’s Plastic Waste Reduction Program certifies the impacts of projects that reduce plastic pollution. Verra established the Plastic Program with the help of the 3R Initiative, a cross-sectoral collaboration involving organisations such as Danone that offer specific perspectives on the plastics value chain and waste management. The Plastic Program addresses the mismanagement of large amounts of plastic waste due to inadequate waste management infrastructure and substandard disposal practices.
