Social fintech a 2-in-1 solution to poverty and plastic pollution

Dawn Marie F. Cabigon, the Philippine campaign lead of the United Nations-backed project to reduce carbon emissions of local companies, is also the co-founder of the non-profit Reach Out and Feed Philippines (ROFP), which conducts community and school feedings nationwide to improve child nutrition.

ROFP beneficiaries are the severely malnourished kids who mostly come from families of waste pickers, according to Cabigon. Her desire to pull these families out of poverty can be done by providing them with sustainable livelihood and one ideal solution to make it possible is through the Plastic Bank business model, Cabigon said at the sustainability forum titled “EPR, Circularity and Building a Recycling System That Works” held at the Makati Shangri-La hotel on 7 October. Plastic Bank is a social fintech enterprise founded by Canadian David Katz in May 2013. It is a flexible and rigid plastic waste collection ecosystem currently operating in the Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil, Egypt, Thailand and Cameroon.

In the Philippines, nearly 12,000 waste pickers from 815 junk shops nationwide are supported by Plastic Bank as of October. Through the PlasticBank app, their collected PET bottles and other plastic waste are recorded and the corresponding cash incentives calculated and credited. From the app, the waste picker can transfer the money to their e-wallet.

Plastic Bank also provides waste pickers with food vouchers, accident and health insurance, school kits and tools of the trade.

Community making change

Speaking at the forum, Katz describes Plastic Bank as a community of people who come together and hand-in-hand make change.

“If I can make plastic look like it's diamonds and gold and rubies and wealth, who would throw it away? Of course, people would be collecting it. Of course, people would want to return it and get their value for the diamonds and gold,” he said.

“And so that's what we endeavor to do at Plastic Bank, to continue to reveal the inherent value both in the material and the people who collect it. To continue to rise and be a space where the material itself looks like something that is aspirational to the people,” Katz added.

He recalled the start of the social fintech enterprise in devastated Haiti, which was overrun with plastic waste.

“We began creating stores for the poor, where everything was only available to be purchased using plastic garbage. And that still today is the endeavor. Now we execute in different ways, in different places, through schools and other locations, where kilo by kilo plastic is transacted as money,” Katz said.

Rene Guarin, vice president for Asia Pacific of Plastic Bank and country manager of Plastic Bank Philippines, said the concept is helping eradicate poverty in the Philippines by directly linking members to better markets.

“We’ve given them training that helped increased their collection and income,” according to Guarin.

“The income of the members is like double because the more they collected, the more incentives they get. That whole cycle of motivating, incentivizing the collection adds to the livelihood, adds to the revenue of the family,” he added.

Dorothy Louise Cudo, EPR lead of Plastic Bank, said the enterprise gave more than $332,000 worth of tokens to Filipino waste pickers in 2025.

Supporting EPR compliance

Plastic Bank also acts as a Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO) under the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) law or Republic Act 11898 enacted in 2022. As a PRO, it offers traceable plastic recovery and compliance documentation to obliged enterprises (OEs) or companies legally required to register and implement EPR programs for their plastic packaging waste.

Cabigon credited progress in the implementation of the EPR law or recovery of plastic waste to the waste pickers and the junk shop operators, which segregate plastics from source.

“The informal waste sector accounts for as much as 60 percent of the recyclable material recovered in Metro Manila,” she said.

“Every community that genuinely practices source segregation and every waste picker who becomes a formal part of the system makes their (OEs) EPR compliance cheaper, more reliable, and more credible, because they get cleaner material, better traceability, and stronger numbers,” according to Cabigon.

In 2025, six OEs served by Plastic Bank generated 3.6 million kilograms in plastic footprint, Cudo said. Under the EPR law, the companies are obliged to recover half of their footprint or 1.8 million kilos of plastic waste. Plastic Bank recovered 2 million kilos, for exceeding the target, she said.

Fisher Retail Inc. partnered with Plastic Bank because their model “allowed us to seamlessly link our retail sales directly to local environmental recovery and social impact,” FRI marketing manager Lyod Felizardo said.

“We exceeded our 2024 goal by collecting 7,173 kilograms of plastic waste — over 358,000 bottles — while optimizing our packaging, improving inventory control, and lowering operational waste costs,” he added.

Plastic Bank also serves SC Johnson, a global, family-owned consumer goods manufacturer that produces household cleaning supplies, pest control, air care and storage products. According to Cudo, from 29,000 kilos of monthly plastic collection, SC Johnson was able to recover around 30 million kilos of plastics which it also recycled into post-consumer resin and Windex cleaning products.

Logistics challenge

Member junk shops of Plastic Bank also receive cash incentives after the recovered plastics are recycled by so-called processors, according to Ma. Marilyn Sadol, owner of MBS Plastic Trading in Valenzuela City.

Sadol’s 500-square-meter warehouse handles at least 20 tons of plastics per month but the volume has risen to 30 to 40 tons per month because their waste pickers have increased their collection, motivated by the buying price of plastics and incentives from Plastic Bank.

Plastic Bank also provided pickers with pedicabs which allowed them to collect more plastics, Sadol said.

Other junk shop owners who shared their experience with Plastic Bank during the forum were Jane Dingle of Taguig City, Ella Mandobayan of Malabon City, and Erlinda Peñaflor of Navotas City. They also mentioned the challenges face by their business, such as the high cost of fuel and the 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. truck ban, which stops them from selling their materials during normal business hours. Paying their drivers night differential by operating outside the said hours is costly, they said.