Beatrice Vanek on extended producer responsibility, need for holistic and enforceable regultations, operational trials and behaviour change, and what we can learn about the circular economy.
This is the third in a series we’re calling 10 Years. 10 Lessons, where BFS team members share what they actually learned from their hardest projects.
- Extended producer responsibility (EPR) exists in 60+ countries globally, but in most markets outside Europe it works on paper and encounters difficulties in practice.
- Beatrice Vanek is a Managing Director at GreenForest Solutions, a BFS sister company focused entirely on EPR. GFS also turns five in April 2026.
- Regulation design and pilot operations should run in parallel, or the system never gets off the ground.
- If materials are not separated correctly at the point of discard, every downstream process is harder and more expensive.
| 60+
countries have EPR frameworks. Nearly 400 individual schemes are in force. |
70%+
Of all global EPR policies were enacted after 2001 — with 2025–2026 being the most active period ever |
2027 Deadline for mandatory packaging EPR across all EU countries under the PPWR (Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation) |
Beatrice, you lead GreenForest Solutions (GFS) , which focuses entirely on EPR. What does that actually look like today?
We work with governments to support them to implement EPR for different waste streams. That typically starts with a baseline assessment; understanding what regulation exists, what the gaps are, how ready the public sector is to enforce it. From there we often draft regulation, do capacity building with government teams, and then in parallel, we start developing pilot projects.
The pilot side is something I think gets underestimated. Starting EPR at a small scale; a specific waste stream, a specific geography, a limited set of producers, lets you test the operations before a national rollout. Producers can come on board as supporters, subsidising the operations. And crucially, it gives you a case study. A real, working example that you can point to when you’re asking a National Authority to commit to something at national scale.
You mentioned that enforcement is often where EPR breaks down. What does that look like in practice?
EPR is almost always a new concept in the countries we work in. India and Kenya are among the very few markets outside Europe that have already implemented it. Vietnam and the Philippines are also early movers. But for most of the countries in our portfolio, this regulation is just arriving.
So you have governments that are enthusiastic about EPR, that understand the principle, that have a regulation on the books. And then enforcement stalls. Not because of bad faith, but because organizing waste management is often already using a high amount of internal capacities at environmental agencies in these countries. They have a lot on their plate. The people responsible for EPR enforcement are often the same people managing everything else.
That is actually where GFS sees its role most clearly. We explain the benefits in concrete terms. We show what enforcement actually looks like in practice. And we show governments that EPR is a genuine opportunity to shift financial responsibility for these material streams to the private sector and PROs can do the heavy lifting when is comes to operating the system, which takes something off their desk rather than adding to it. Once that clicks, the backing comes.
What have you learned in the past years?
I can say that delays and uncertainty are not exceptions. They are the pattern. And I think that is completely understandable when you consider that EPR is genuinely new in most of these markets.
What the experience has taught us is that two things have to run in parallel and neither can wait for the other. Regulation design and pilot operations. If you wait for the regulation to be perfect before you start a pilot, you never start. If you run a pilot without a regulatory framework, you have no path to scale. The countries where EPR actually progresses are the ones where someone is willing to hold both tracks simultaneously.
And the one thing you’d tell any government or organisation starting this journey?
The backbone of every EPR system is a binding and holistic regulation that is enforced. You need clear definitions, roles and responsibilities and targets. All producers and importers need to be listed and the amounts of waste arriving on the market need to be registered.
Everything will build on that.
For the operations, the technical solutions are already there. The technology to manage waste, to collect it, to process it, to get value out of it. None of that is the hard part. The waste management actors need to collaborate and their operations need to be financially viable through the EPR funds.
If citizens separate their waste correctly at the point of discard, everything that follows is cheaper and more effective. The processing is more efficient. The material quality is higher.
“The backbone of every EPR system is a binding and holistic regulation that is enforced. Everything will build on that.”
Beatrice Vanek, Managing Director, GreenForest Solutions
A note on how Bea got here: In 2016 she was working in construction, travelling, and standing on a beach in Cuba watching waste wash in. She decided that day to change fields. She did a master’s in Environmental Engineering Science at the University of Rostock, wrote her thesis on EPR, and a professor there introduced her to Sebastian Frisch (MD of GreenForest Solutions). About six years ago, she joined what would become the BFS Group.
About the series:
BlackForest Solutions turned 10 in March 2026. Instead of a celebration, we asked 10 team members to share the hardest lesson from their hardest project. This is what a decade of doing the work actually looks like.
About Beatrice Vanek:
Beatrice Vanek is a Managing Director at GreenForest Solutions, the EPR-focused company within the BlackForest Solutions Group. She leads EPR design, regulation drafting, capacity building, and pilot project development across multiple countries. Prior to GFS, she worked in construction, completed her master’s at the University of Rostock with a focus on environmental management and EPR in India, and has since built a global portfolio of EPR programmes spanning Southeast Asia, MENA, Africa, and beyond.
Project at a Glance
| GreenForest Solutions — EPR Advisory | Company Snapshot |
| Founded | 2021 (5 years old in 2026) |
| Focus | Extended Producer Responsibility across multiple waste streams |
| Geography | 30+ country portfolio |
| Core Services | EPR system development and PRO operations |
| Sister Company | BlackForest Solutions GmbH |
EPR — Extended Producer Responsibility; a policy framework that places responsibility for end-of-life management of products on the producers who put them on the market.
PRO — Producer Responsibility Organisation; a collective body through which producers collectively manage their EPR obligations.
GFS — ‘GreenForest Solutions (GFS), the EPR-focused company within the BlackForest Solutions Group’
Pilot project — A small-scale, operational test of an EPR scheme in a specific geography or waste stream, designed to generate evidence and build stakeholder confidence before national rollout.
FAQs: EPR Implementation, Enforcement, and Behaviour Change in Emerging Markets
Q1. Why does EPR fail in developing and emerging market countries despite having regulation in place?
Regulation alone means nothing without enforcement capacity and in most emerging markets, the agencies responsible for EPR are already overstretched managing every other environmental priority. When producers feel blindsided by compliance demands they never helped shape, opposition becomes the default response.
Q2. What is an EPR pilot project and why does it come before national rollout?
A pilot tests whether the operational model actually works in a specific geography or waste stream before governments commit to national scale. It also produces the one thing a Ministry of Environment needs most, a real, working example they can point to when asking for political and budget commitment.
Q3. Should EPR regulation design and pilot operations run at the same time?
Yes, always waiting for perfect regulation before starting a pilot loses years, and running a pilot with no regulatory path to scale leads nowhere. The countries where EPR actually moves forward are the ones willing to hold both tracks simultaneously, imperfect as that is.
Q4. What is the role of a Producer Responsibility Organisation (PRO) in an EPR scheme?
A PRO is the collective body producers form to fulfil their EPR obligations together managing collection, financing, and reporting on behalf of member companies instead of each running its own take-back system. Getting a functional PRO off the ground is consistently one of the hardest steps in any EPR rollout.
Q5. Why is behaviour change the hardest barrier to EPR success?
The technology to collect and process packaging waste already exists what cannot be legislated is what citizens do at the moment they throw something away. If waste isn’t separated correctly at the point of discard, every downstream process becomes more contaminated, more expensive, and less effective.
Q6. Which countries outside Europe have successfully implemented EPR?
India and Kenya have the most established mandatory EPR frameworks outside Europe, with Vietnam and the Philippines emerging as early movers in Southeast Asia. What they share is a willingness to invest in enforcement capacity and private sector engagement before the regulation formally came into force.
Q7. What does GreenForest Solutions (GFS) do in EPR implementation?
GFS works with governments and producers across 60+ countries on the full EPR implementation cycle from baseline assessments and regulation drafting through to pilot project design and government capacity building. Their core principle: regulation and pilot operations must run in parallel, not one after the other.