Fast-moving Consumer Goods constitute products with rapid turnover and relatively low durability, including items like packaged foods, beverages, personal care products, and household cleaning supplies. Fast-moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) play a vital role in modern society, but their widespread consumption also presents significant challenges in waste management. The nature of FMCG products, which often involve short lifecycles and frequent consumption, creates unique waste management challenges that need to be addressed to ensure environmental sustainability.

As the population increases, plastic usage and thereby waste generation is also growing. Approaches to managing waste in the municipalities of Nepal include unorganized dumping and open burning. On average, 48% of the waste in municipalities is landfilled, while 32% is burnt, and 27% is openly dumped on riversides. Open burning is directly linked to air pollution and its harmful effect on the health of common citizens. According to a report by the World Bank (2019), Kathmandu alone generates over 400 tons of plastic waste daily, a number that has likely increased since then. Existing policies and regulations in Nepal struggle to keep pace with the rapid increase in plastic waste.

To uncover the opportunities and challenges on plastic waste management, One to Watch conducted a round table discussion with leading FMCG producers, cement industries and plastic producers with representations from Unilever Nepal, Bottlers Nepal (Coca Cola Nepal), Yashoda Foods, Nepal Dairy, Sarbottam Cement.

Engaging discourses on challenges and opportunities for EPR, current state of plastic waste management, existing government policy/regulation and their impact and gaps in overall waste management were carried out in the roundtable discussion. The key highlights of the roundtable discussion is presented below: