The Global Stewardship Playbook

7 expert-led webinars. 30+ years of proven European experience. One opportunity to shape the future of soft plastic stewardship in Australasia. 

Australia and New Zealand are at a critical turning point. We are on the verge of implementing collection, processing and circularity outcomes for our communities, governments and industry partners. 

Europe has spent three decades building mandatory producer responsibility systems that now deliver world-leading performance through stable funding, clear rules, and shared responsibility between government and industry. 

The Global Stewardship Playbook was hosted by Soft Plastic Stewardship Australia and Helen Millicer (One Planet Consulting), drawing on her insights and contacts developed during her time in Europe. In partnership with APCO and The Packaging Forum NZ, the webinars feature world-leading experts from Europe and the UK, sharing the proven strategies, structures and funding models behind some of the most effective stewardship systems in the world. 

The series will help you understand the critical elements in product stewardship and why they are important for the running of effective and efficient schemes that deliver real social and environmental outcomes. 

At the end of the series, you will understand how and why these design elements have been incorporated into Australasian soft plastic schemes. 

Across seven sessions over six months, we explored practical lessons on market development, governance, funding, infrastructure and regulation. 

Each webinar covered 

Build a commercially resilient system 

Explore how European stewardship schemes have achieved stable funding and efficient operations over decades. Understand how similar approaches can help create cost-effective frameworks, design effective levy structures, and open pathways to high-quality recycled materials for local markets. 

Government alignment  

See how leading PROs work hand-in-hand with governments to shape national stewardship systems. Participating gives businesses the insight and positioning to align early with regulatory expectations, ensuring they’re part of the conversation, not reacting to it. 

Responding to rising community and environmental expectations 

Learn how some effective stewardship systems have supported clear recycling labelling by developing consistent whole of recycling system standards and/or processes that delivered real landfill diversion outcomes and increased public confidence. This series highlighted how these lessons can support credible, on-the-ground results in Australia and New Zealand. 

THE GLOBAL STEWARDSHIP PLAYBOOK SERIES: VIDEO LINKS

Session 1: (22 October 2025): 10 Golden Rules for effective product stewardship and pitfalls to avoid in Australia  

This session covered the fundamentals on stewardship schemes, starting with EXPRA’s well researched 10 Golden Rules for success based on challenges and lessons from good and bad schemes, including those EU schemes running for 30+ years. We covered competing vs solo schemes, for-profit and not-for-profit schemes, membership and governance and the role schemes play in collections, processing, contracts and public communications. 

Joachim Quoden, CEO Extended Producer Responsibility Alliance (EXPRA) is becoming the globally recognised authority on robust and effective stewardship schemes, including advising the European Commission on their inclusion of EPR into eco-product regulations.  

Robbie Staniforth, Innovation and Policy Director, Ecosurety, UK explained the complex, expensive tangle of UK’s laws, plastic taxes and competing schemes.

This webinar series was made possible by the voluntary participation of our members: