Vietnam is making moves to revise its extended producer responsibility (EPR) policy to better promote the development of a circular economy.
Announced at the “Pathways for a Robust Extended Producer Responsibility System in Vietnam” workshop in Hanoi, the revision applies to the 2020 Law on Environmental Protection and its included regulations, including provisions addressing EPR.
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Tăng The Cuong, director general of Vietnam’s Department of Environment, said that EPR should not be viewed merely as a financial obligation for businesses, but rather a mechanism that incentivizes changes in product design, material selection, collection and recycling systems, and investment in circular solutions.
Cuong said that Vietnam has made significant progress in establishing and implementing EPR over the past six years, but the practice still has room for improvement. To boost transparency and effectiveness, the nation needs to offer stronger incentives for the collection and recycling market.
The Vietnam Department of Environment’s draft policy calls for strengthening the role of private sector stakeholders in implementing EPR practices. The nation aims to do that by focusing on developing policies, legal frameworks and monitoring mechanisms that would require producers to directly organize collection and recycling of post-consumer products and packaging either independently or using third-party producer responsibility organization recyclers. The updated policy also will eliminate the ability for producers to simply make financial contributions to the Vietnam Environment Protection Fund as a means of fulfilling their recycling obligations.
Francesca Nardini, deputy resident representative of the United Nations Development Program in Vietnam said the next challenge for the nation will be developing an EPR system that operates effectively, sustainably and in accordance with market demands.
“EPR should not only ensure regulatory compliance or meet recycling targets, but also help transform how resources circulate within the economy, create value from materials that might otherwise become waste and encourage investment and innovation,” she said.
Apparel is one of Vietnam’s largest industries, valued at $7.52 billion in 2025 and growing at a compound annual growth rate of 6.80 percent to reach $11.14 billion by 2031, according to Ken Research. The country’s packaging sector is heavily connected to apparel, particularly with the growth of e-commerce.
During the event in Hanoi, Dr. Fritz Flanderka, executive director of packaging specialist the Reclay Group, said there is no universal EPR model that will fit all scenarios. The core focus can be shifting recycling and collection responsibility to businesses, but the design and operation of these systems must be tailored to the markets and institutions they regulate.
With that in mind, PROs will play a central role in any EPR policy, connecting producers with collection, sorting and recycling networks. Experts at the Hanoi summit said the responsibilities of PROs, along with capacity requirements and oversight mechanisms, must be clearly defined in EPR policy. Under the policy revisions currently under consideration, PROs would be mandated to meet requirements related to organizational ability for collection, financial capacity, electronic data management and accounting.
Currently, informal waste pickers and scrap collectors make up a large portion of Vietnam’s collection system, so the new policy also will factor in that labor so that workers aren’t left behind. And the revision also will take into account the time constraints and investments needed to roll out a more developed EPR system, so mandatory recycling rates would be adjusted in phases to allow producers time to prepare for compliance.
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