Filipino consumers use enough sachets each year to bury the entirety of Metropolitan Manila under a foot of plastic. Without an adequate circular economy value chain for flexibles, the roughly 60 billion sachets used annually – which also make up nearly 80 per cent of the nation’s plastic waste – are already choking the country’s waterways, polluting its oceans, and crowding landfills. These difficulties are exacerbated by the challenges in collecting and segregating waste, a dearth of functional recycling facilities, inadequate consumer behaviour, and limited waste management companies that cannot cope with the requirements and volume of plastic waste. Rising inflation rates are also pushing more Filipino families to reduce household spending, further increasing the nation’s reliance on sachets, which are viewed as both affordable and convenient. It is these striking deficiencies that warrant a rethink and advancement of the Philippines’ recycling infrastructure in the hopes of closing the country’s staggering 85 per cent recycling capacity gap.