As the Alliance to End Plastic Waste celebrates its five-year anniversary, The Innovation Platform spoke with Ted Toth, Vice President of Global Programs and Circularity, to discuss the Alliance’s 2024 Progress Report and the evolving focus set out by its Strategy 2030.
The Alliance to End Plastic Waste has released its Progress Report 2024, highlighting five years of impactful initiatives aimed at tackling plastic waste. Since its inception in 2019, the Alliance has successfully reduced nearly 240,000 tonnes of unmanaged plastic and catalysed over US$610m in funding commitments.
The Progress Report outlines the launch of its Strategy 2030, shifting the Alliance’s strategic focus, and delivering large-scale programmes aligned with national priorities in India, Indonesia, and South Africa, while addressing significant challenges in plastic recycling.
To learn more about Strategy 2030 and the key outtakes from the 2024 Progress Report, The Innovation Platform spoke with Ted Toth, Vice President of Global Programmes & Circularity at the Alliance to End Plastic Waste.
What prompted the Alliance to evolve its strategic focus? What is included in Strategy 2030, and what impacts do you expect this to have?
It has been five years since the Alliance was founded. Our experience from supporting over 80 projects since has taught us that systems change is necessary to end plastic waste and create a circular economy for plastics. Advocating for change alone is hardly enough – there remains an urgent need to develop and demonstrate solutions that solve plastic pollution and deliver plastic circularity.
Strategy 2030 is how the Alliance is evolving to advance plastic circularity globally. To drive impact at speed and scale, we are developing large-scale integrated programmes in partnership with governments and co-funders such as development finance institutions (DFIs). These programmes aim to effect systems change through two distinct lenses:
Country-specific programmes are intended to help countries move up the recycling maturity curve in a way that is aligned with their government’s national priorities. Focussed on emerging and developing economies (EMDEs), our first country programmes will take place in Indonesia, India, and South Africa.
Thematic programmes address persistent global challenges to plastic circularity. The Alliance’s first thematic programme will tackle flexible films, which are difficult to collect and recycle. Thematic programmes may span multiple regions, including countries that already have a good rate of plastic recycling. These countries are well-positioned to trial advanced sortation and recycling technologies that can further improve the rate and quality of hard-to-recycle plastic waste.
Ultimately, our goal is to improve solid waste management and plastic recycling infrastructure solutions in underserved regions and thematic areas, identifying a model for public and private investment to follow.
Last year, we highlighted some incredible projects and solutions that the Alliance has been working on, including Mr Green Africa and the African Reclaimers Organisation. How has the work continued with these organisations?
Both Mr Green Africa (MGA) and the African Reclaimers Organisation (ARO) continue to be active partners of the Alliance.
Per our latest Progress Report, ARO has diverted approximately 14,300 tonnes of plastic from the environment and landfill and supplied over 12,800 tonnes of plastic waste for recycling. More than half of the 6,000 reclaimers in ARO’s network have also been formally recognised through the South African Waste Picker Registration System (SAWPRS), due to the combined support of the World Bank and the Alliance.
As of 2025, ARO is now in the third phase of its partnership with the Alliance. This includes the gradual digitalisation of the volume data of the plastic waste collected as part of an effort to enable the real-time tracking of recovered materials.
MGA continues to scale community-based plastic waste collection in Kenya, integrating informal waste workers and micro-entrepreneurs into the formal value chain. The Alliance provides a concessional loan to MGA as one of several co-funders of the initiative.
It is important to note that most of what the Alliance and our partners do is at the fringes of what is currently possible. This is either because the work takes place in areas where there is high leakage of waste into the environment, are in emerging economies with nascent waste management systems, involve new technology, innovative business models, novel financing mechanisms, or a combination of all of the above.
As with any project operating in complex environments, we do not expect everyone to work perfectly or achieve the same level of success at the same pace. Nonetheless, we consider it important to continue testing and refining solutions that have the potential to turn plastic into a circular material.
The concept of catalytic capital has been emphasised in both the 2023 and 2024 Progress Reports. Why is this approach so important, and could you elaborate on some of its successes? For instance, last year we discussed the ASASE Foundation, which is also featured in this year’s report.
Catalytic capital is the cornerstone of Strategy 2030. Large-scale infrastructure developments and upgrades are needed to make meaningful strides towards a circular economy for plastics, but this requires funding on a scale that the Alliance alone cannot provide. Unlocking funding from DFIs and the private sector is therefore an essential component of implementing our new programmes.
These new programmes will be resource-intensive undertakings. DFIs are an ideal partner as they not only hold significant capital but are also already deeply entrenched with national governments. The rigorous standards DFIs set will guide our programme development, manage project risks, and unlock new avenues of funding, particularly relevant for EMDEs that need financial support.
Our work with the ASASE Foundation illustrates how initial funding provided by the Alliance can help project partners unlock additional, larger sources of funding that enable them to scale. Based in Ghana, the ASASE Foundation was founded by two women to empower female microentrepreneurs in the recycling sector.
Through our financial and technical support in setting up sorting and recycling operations, ASASE developed a functional system and is now a recipient of the World Bank’s Plastic Waste Reduction-Linked Bond, which provides investors with a financial return linked to plastic and carbon credits expected to be generated by the project. This will provide the ASASE Foundation with financing that far exceeds our initial investment, an outcome we hope to achieve with more of our project partners.
We have since exited the project as ASASE has progressed to a stage where the organisation can meet the standards necessary to qualify for other pools of capital. Our hope is for other projects to reach a similar level of maturity.
This year’s progress report highlights a variety of new collaborations for the Alliance. Can you elaborate on some of the case studies included in this year’s report and discuss their potential impact in 2026 and beyond?
The work we undertake is complex, and it takes time to observe and report the outcomes. Many of the collaborations highlighted in the latest Progress Report have therefore been ongoing for a few years.
One notable collaboration is the Plastic Circularity Fund. Managed by Lombard Odier Investment Managers, the Fund is a pioneering initiative aimed at addressing the growing global challenge of plastic pollution. The Fund promotes the transition to a circular economy by investing in businesses that offer scalable and economically viable solutions, enabling the reduction of virgin plastic production and the creation of closed-loop systems.
2023 saw the first successful close of the Fund. Last year, the Fund invested in four sustainability-driven organisations, including a French refillable cosmetic products company and a German precision-heating solutions company that reduces the amount of plastic material required for certain packaging. We believe this is a significant milestone in deepening available financing platforms targeting this critical area of circularity.
The Alliance was a seed investor in the Fund, with a US$10m capital contribution. We continue to act as a technical advisor, providing industry-led advice on the technical feasibility, commercial viability, and scalability of plastic circularity solutions, including waste management technology and infrastructure.
The report underscores the value of collaboration in addressing plastic waste challenges, not only in developing solutions but also in bringing together like-minded individuals and organisations. How important is it that a resolution is reached on the International Legally Binding Instrument to End Plastic Pollution in order to solve the issue on a global level?
The outcome of INC 5.2 was disappointing. We believe that an enabling framework and harmonised targets will aid all of us in transitioning to a circular economy for plastics and deliver the environmental, social, and economic benefits the world needs.
While we had hoped for a global plastics treaty, it’s now clear that advocacy alone is not enough. Progress is only possible through coordinated action and collaboration, and our new strategy aims to do precisely this. Systems change is driven by action on the ground and not by words on paper.
This is a critical moment for industry to do its part by implementing and demonstrating economically viable solutions that have the potential for scaling and replication.
Looking ahead to 2026, what initiatives or strategies are being considered to build on the successes of the 2024 report and work towards Strategy 2030? Are there any new areas of focus for the Alliance moving forward?
We are currently laser-focused on programme development and implementation of Strategy 2030. Our programmes are multi-year initiatives that require a significant amount of coordination and collaboration with national and municipal governments, as well as other co-founders.
As with any greenfield portfolio, we do not expect every project to achieve the same level of success. Our mission is consistent with endeavours requiring a bold pioneering spirit, managing the financial risk associated with investing in new solutions across technology, business, operating, and social models. If these projects were easy, we would not be fulfilling our purpose.
Effective collaboration has been integral to the success of previous projects and will continue to underpin our future programmes. A circular economy has no lack of advocates, but collective action is crucial to delivering tangible outcomes.
Moving ahead, we seek to deepen and expand our collaborations with a diverse range of like-minded stakeholders who share our vision for achieving a circular economy for plastics.
Please note, this article will also appear in the 24th edition of our quarterly publication.
