The SM Group is strengthening its commitment to reduce plastic waste, treating it as a shared responsibility across all its business units.
Led by its parent company, SM Investments Corp., the conglomerate recently established a working group committee that holds regular dialogues, encouraging SM’s various businesses to incorporate plastic reduction into their sustainability roadmaps.
This initiative supports the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Act of 2022, which mandates companies to take responsibility for recovering their plastic packaging products and implementing waste management programs.
“While plastic plays a crucial role in modern life, its convenience often contributes to a throwaway culture, leading to one of our planet’s most pressing environmental challenges,” said Timothy Daniels, head of investor relations and sustainability at SM Investments Corp.
“We understand the importance of waste recovery and recycling not only as part of our sustainable business vision but also as a social and legal obligation. SM’s approach is both practical and actionable.”
SM Markets, the umbrella brand for SM Supermarket, SM Hypermarket, and Savemore, promotes greener retail practices by encouraging the use of eco-bags over single-use plastics since 2007. In 2024 alone, SM Markets sold 19 million Green Bags, preventing the use of an estimated 42 million plastic bags.
Watsons Philippines, an affiliate of SM Retail, has transitioned 81 percent of its stores to using paper bags instead of single-use plastics.
Additionally, over 2,140 retail stock-keeping units (SKUs) fall under Watsons’ Sustainable Choices category, which includes products classified as Clean Beauty, Better Ingredients, Better Packaging, and Refills, reflecting its commitment to offering more environmentally responsible options to consumers.
Goldilocks Bakeshop Inc., one of SM’s portfolio investments, reduced the size of ribbons used in its packaging, leading to an annual reduction of 7,000 kilograms of plastics.
2GO Group Inc., the SM Group’s logistics business, has also taken deliberate steps to reduce plastic use by transitioning to environmentally friendly packaging. Their shipping operations now utilize 100 percent recyclable, reusable, and biodegradable packaging materials.
Considering its extensive footprint across the Philippines, SM Prime Holdings Inc. (SM Prime), SM’s property arm, is committed to fostering the necessary infrastructure to support and maintain plastic waste management strategies across its businesses. SM Prime has equipped its properties with materials recovery facilities (MRFs) and standardized waste segregation systems across all malls and developments. There are 15 designated drop-off points for plastic wastes, which have diverted 63,874 kilograms of plastics from landfills.
Trash-to-Cash (TTC) is a long-running monthly recycling market held in all SM Supermalls, where customers can exchange recyclables — such as paper, plastic, and metal — for cash. TTC has facilitated the exchange of over 1 million kilograms of recyclables each month, totaling approximately 12 million kilograms. This is equivalent to saving 204,000 trees if all the recyclables were paper or reducing 18,000 tons of carbon emissions if all were plastic.
Consumer-facing initiatives, such as the RDC (recyclable, disposable, compostable) segregation bins launched by SM Supermalls in 2023 and various information drives, help employees and customers reinforce the group’s wider efforts.
SM Hotels and Conventions Corporation (SMHCC) phased out single-use plastics in its hotels as early as 2018, replacing amenities with refillable or eco-friendly options.
“Plastic waste reduction at SM is about steady, coordinated progress made possible by a shared culture of everyday solutions, and a proactive approach across all our businesses,” Daniels said.
The United Nations Environment Programme has identified plastic pollution as a global problem, with 19 million to 23 million tons of plastic waste entering the ecosystem and polluting lakes, rivers, and seas.
