Reducing Plastic Pollution
at source

The Upstream Lab is a 2.5 year program led by SecondMuse and InOff Plastic to support the emergence and scaling of upstream solutions to reduce plastic waste across South and SouthEast Asia. The Lab tackles the issue using an ecosystem approach, working to address the barriers to scale for corporates, consumers, policy-makers and actors across the supply chain for plastics.

“Upstream solutions offer the biggest reduction in terms of plastic pollution, often represent net savings, and provide the highest mitigation opportunity in GHG emissions. They could reduce up to half of the world’s plastic leakage by 2040.”

– Breaking the Plastic Wave

The Challenge

Each year, about eight million tons of plastic waste enters our oceans. That’s equivalent to five full trash bags along every foot of coastline worldwide. Five Asian nations — India, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam are responsible for 60% of this waste, making it an urgent challenge – and opportunity –  to address.

Brands across the region are facing increasing legislative and consumer pressure to address this plastic waste problem. Recycling was never going to be the only answer to reduce plastic pollution; reducing plastics at source through upstream innovation is vital.

91% of consumers are ‘extremely concerned’ about the plastic waste issue, according to a 2020 survey of 2000 consumers and 400 businesses across Asia. And while many brands have begun their sustainability journey, they often experience common challenges to sourcing, testing and scaling their solutions.

Our Approach

The Upstream Lab has four pillars designed to tackle plastic waste at source:

  1. Accelerate the discovery, testing, validation and evaluation of long term adoption models by corporates
  2. Build lasting commercial partnerships between value chain actors to support the translation to circular upstream models
  3. Support systemic change in consumer behavior for upstream solutions to become mainstream 
  4. Drive policy change to accelerate the transition to effective upstream models 

The program will source innovative solutions for plastic product redesign, refill and reuse models, and alternative materials to plastics. The work will take place across five core countries – India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines, focussing on building partnerships across the retail, hospitality, and food and beverage (F&B) sectors. 

Interested to learn more?

If you’d like to partner with us to scale innovative upstream solutions to reduce plastic waste, please connect at asiapacific@secondmuse.com. We’re actively looking for corporate partners and funders who are keen to grow this work to increase the positive impact on the environment.