The Story of Sachets

Image credits: Ezra Acayan, on assignment for Break Free From Plastic
Story by: Devayani Khare and Miko Aliño

In the 1980s, consumers in developing countries purchased only what they needed and could afford, often using containers for their purchases - a culture known as ‘tingi’ in the Philippines.

Multinational FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) corporations, eager to expand their presence in Asia's markets and enhance brand recognition, hijacked this tradition and started selling various products in smaller increments.

Enter the sachet!

What's a sachet?

A single-use pouch or packet, often made of plastic, and sometimes mixed materials such as paper and metal, used across Asia to sell small portions of basic goods from shampoo and detergent, to instant coffee and soy sauce at low prices.

What began as a seemingly benevolent solution to harness growing demand in emerging economies, sachets were marketed as a means to cater to the needs of low-income consumers but later morphed into a widespread environmental crisis.

Sachet Production

To package a variety of different products, both dry and wet, sachet production experimented with multi-layered formats using materials such as plastic including Polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyester (PET), aluminium foil or metallised films, ethylene vinyl alcohol (EVOH), paper, to name a few.

As the market expanded, sachets came in various sizes, ranging from extra small (approximately 13.125 x 18.5625 mm) to extra large (210 x 297 mm), with sizes spanning in between. Today, the definition of sachets extends beyond mere dimensions; it encompasses the single-use, multi-layered nature of packaging.

Sachet Consumption & Usage

Across Asia, neighbourhood convenience stores, street-side vendors, and hawkers embraced the sachet format to offer a wider array of products to consumers.

Unfortunately, the sachets replaced traditional distribution formats; products wrapped in a twist of newspaper, reusable containers, refill stations, buy-back schemes, and deposits for bottles or cans.

Sachet Disposal

But convenience comes at a steep price. These tiny packets are extremely difficult to recover after disposal, and their multi-layered construction makes them difficult to recycle, if not impossible. This creates a significant burden for waste workers, who struggle with the vast discrepancy between the time it takes to collect and sort these sachets compared to their minimal economic value.

With no market value and no commercially viable choices for safe treatment, the disposal options are limited. Local municipal bodies are compelled to bury or burn them, releasing toxic pollutants into the air and soil.

False Solutions

Across Asia, corporations have promoted ingenious, albeit false solutions for post-consumer sachet waste. Sachets are often shredded and sent to be burned as fuel, often replacing coal, in waste-to-energy initiatives at paper mills, cement kilns, and jaggery factories.

In some cases, sachets are even burned to smoke tofu. Research conducted by Nexus3 and IPEN revealed high levels of dioxin - a highly hazardous chemical - in one of these plastic-burning tofu factories. The incineration of sachets or any form of plastic waste releases dioxins, and new emerging research sheds light on the health impacts of this harmful practice.

Other false solutions include repurposing sachets into construction materials, as well as for furniture and office supplies.

This is one among many cement factories in Southeast Asia powered by plastic waste. Apart from the carbon dioxide emissions, the practice of burning sachets, along with other plastics, is under scrutiny due to the complex mix of chemicals and additives, and their alarming health implications.

Corporations have piloted chemical recycling of sachets, such as Unilever's CreaSolv project which fell far short in the face of practical challenges. Such examples should serve as a reminder of how complicated it is to deal with sachet waste. When false solutions fail, sachets end up in landfills, or waterways like rivers and oceans, and ultimately, into the environment, thereby polluting our planet.

Advocating for Change

Some Break Free From Plastic organisations across Asia developed an addendum to the brand audit methodology to measure the pervasiveness of sachets and link them to the corporations responsible.

Between October 2023 and February 2024, 807 volunteers organised brand audits in 50 locations across India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Together, these volunteers from 25 organisations collected a total of 33,467 sachets.

A staggering 2,678 brands that sell products in sachets were audited across four countries: India (380), Indonesia (1,212) the Philippines (784), and Vietnam (395), which indicates the proliferation of this problematic, single-use format.

The brand audits identified the top 10 sachet polluters in Asia, namely Unilever, Wings, Mayora Indah, Wadia Group, Balaji Wafers Private Limited, Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, Yes 2 Healthy Life, JG Summit Holdings, and Salim Group.

The 2023 sachet brand audit report highlights the widespread problem of single-use sachets and the urgent need for action within the framework of the global plastics treaty, which advocates for eliminating high-risk and polluting plastic products - such as sachets.

BFFP calls on fast-moving consumer goods corporations to take immediate action to phase out or quit sachets, to effectively address the environmental, social and economic impacts of these single-use plastics.

Likewise, corporations should support governments and communities while scaling up true alternatives like reuse and refill, and incentivise return policies that enable a just transition for solutions that are truly good for both people and the planet.

Photographer: Ezra Acayan

Two-time World Press Photo awardee and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Ezra Acayan is a Philippines-based photographer with a decade of experience covering politics, climate change, and social injustice. He has covered the issue of plastic pollution, with a focus on sachets before, and this photo series hopes to capture the lifecycle of sachets and their adverse impact on the environment, and human health.

Story: the Break Free From Plastic Team

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