Laws and Regulations

1.  The National Strategic Plan for Green Growth 2013-2030 (2013)

   This strategic plan aims to advance Cambodia’s economic development while ensuring environmental, social, and cultural sustainability through the adoption of green growth practices and policies. The plan outlines nine strategic directions, including ‘Green Environment and Natural Resources Management’, which serves as the cornerstone for a green economy. Within this framework, the plan emphasizes principles such as reducing, reusing, and recycling (3R), alongside the polluters-pay principle, as integral policies for effective waste management, ultimately contributing to improved environmental quality.

2. National Environment Strategy and Action Plan 2016–2023 (2017)

   In addition to other environmental agenda, this action plan supports activities related to solid waste management, such as separation, collection, transport, treatment, and disposal, with sanitary landfill expected to help solve waste management issues. The action plan reinforces implementation of the reduce, reuse, recycle (3R) principle and volume-based waste collection fees, and encourages solid waste managers to modernize and integrate their operations.

3. Urban Solid Waste Management Policy 2020-2030 (2021)

   This policy was developed in 2021 to strengthen the management of various types of waste, including solid, liquid, gas, and hazardous wastes through the implementation of 4Rs: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Furthermore, it takes into account economic efficiency, financial resource capacity, environmental sustainability, and social acceptance in initiating and implementing a new advanced waste management system (Pheakdey, et al., 2022).

4. National Circular Economy Strategy and Action Plan (2021)

   Cambodia launched the National Circular Economy Strategy and Action Plan with the aim of creating an enabling environment towards a circular economy. This Action Plan covers five strategic objectives:

                i.  Increase efficient use of raw materials, and promote sustainable design, production, remanufacturing and distribution

               ii.  Promote sustainable consumption and effective reuse and repair

              iii.  Enhance waste collection and recycling

              iv.  Ensure effective management of residual waste

               v.  Enhance crosscutting stakeholder engagement, awareness and capacity building.

   Each of these objectives comprises a set of priority areas and actions along with an associated roadmap for short-, medium-, and longer-term actions. Specific to the management of plastic waste, notable actions include promoting production of alternatives to single-use plastic (SUP), developing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes and plastic production standards, reducing consumption of SUP and other single-use materials, promoting reuse and repair business models, and improving waste segregation and recycling.

5. Cambodia’s Roadmap for Sustainable Consumption and Production 2022-2035 (2022)

   On the following year, the RGC published Cambodia’s Roadmap for Sustainable Consumption and Production 2022-2035, which demonstrated the country’s commitment in achieving a sustainable resource efficiency. This roadmap lays out comprehensive strategies across the full consumption and production system, covering five elements from sustainable production, distribution, consumption, investment, to values for sustainability for various economic sectors including solid waste management. When it comes to the management of plastic waste, the roadmap identifies a number of priority actions to increase its sustainability, such as:

6. Circular Strategy on Environment 2023-2028 (2023)

In accordance with the country’s new long-term development plan towards the Cambodia Vision 2050, the Pentagonal Strategy, the Ministry of Environment crafted a 5-year roadmap in 2023 which outlines priority actions to achieve the sustainable use of the environmental and natural resources. The Circular Strategy on Environment 2023-2028 focuses on three strategies, each representing different sectors: Clean, centering around pollution, Green, revolving about protected areas and local communities, and Sustainable, concentrating on compliance, cooperation, and coordination.

Provisions for managing solid waste and plastic pollution are primarily encompassed within the Clean strategy, which includes the following key actions:

•  Develop sub-decree on the management of single-use plastic products and plastic waste, sub-decree on the management of hazardous wastes, declaration on lead in paints, declaration on the types of electrical and electronic equipment, declaration on the report on the release and transfer of pollutants into the environment, and other relevant legal instruments;

• Design and implement a plastic waste clean-up campaign after the first phase of the reduction of plastic use campaign accomplished;

• Foster the implementation of the 4R Principle "Refuse, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle" to promote solid waste management, particularly plastic waste, as well as supporting a circular economy;

• Disseminate legal instruments related to the management of solid, liquid, plastic and hazardous wastes to the public, particularly to the owners of pollution sources;

• Encourage the processing of agricultural products and plants into packaging materials to alternate of using plastic;

B. Local Level

The Phnom Penh Waste Management Strategy and Action Plan 2018–2035 aims to create a reliable waste management system in the capital city. Additionally, it seeks to coordinate the efforts of different actors for minimising the environmental and health impacts frequently caused by improper waste management. The plan has six targets:

1. efficient disposal, collection, and waste management service;

2. advanced recycling through waste separation, engagement with private sector, and promotion of recycled products;

3. efficient waste disposal management and better-quality livelihoods;

4. sound management of special waste – medical, industrial, and electronic; and

5. joint actions with stakeholders.

The first target requires a regulation on city-wide waste separation and behaviour change. The second target is crucial because it requires recycling of plastic. On plastic, the plan states: ‘To improve waste collection coverage in urban areas and minimize the amount of waste in landfills, segregation of organic and plastic waste at source for recycling will be promoted’.

Updated as of 10 January 2025.