Piloting Local Business Models and Scalable Best Practices that Promote the 3Rs and Build More Circular Economies

Case in Brief

Community efforts to recycle local waste play an important role in the recovery and collection of plastic—incentivizing community recycling efforts, building community awareness and engagement, and partnering directly with the private sector to purchase and return materials to the circular economy. To prevent plastics and other waste from entering the environment, USAID’s Clean Cities, Blue Ocean program—the Agency’s flagship program to address ocean plastic pollution under the Save our Seas Initiative—backs innovative, locally-led solutions in its ten focal countries that promote and facilitate the 3Rs—reduce, reuse, and recycle. One way is through the support of local grantees that are piloting new models that help to strengthen underdeveloped local recycling systems and build circular economies. Through this approach, grantees in the Philippines and other Clean Cities, Blue Ocean focal countries are finding new ways to educate and incentivize communities to practice the 3Rs, integrate informal workers to increase recycling rates and improve their livelihoods, and engage the private sector to promote a circular economy.