REP Alliances in the Dominican Republic: What You Can Learn from the Cervecería Nacional–Recolectiva–Planta Renacer Model

Why the REP Model Matters Right Now

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is no longer a future conversation in the Dominican Republic. Law 225-20 on Comprehensive Solid Waste Management and Co-processing established the legal framework, and the country has begun to see the first concrete alliances that demonstrate the model can operate under real local conditions. For any sustainability or operations manager who has on their desk the question of how to comply with regulations or how to structure a recovery scheme, understanding how an active EPR alliance works is the most practical starting point.

What the Law Requires and from Whom

Law 225-20 places the responsibility for post-consumer waste management on producers, importers, and distributors of goods that generate waste. In practice, that means a company that places products packaged in plastic, glass, or other materials on the market cannot disregard those containers once they reach the consumer. The law requires having a system to recover them, process them, or ensure that someone else does so in a verifiable way.

The mechanisms for compliance can be individual—building collection and processing infrastructure—or collective, which is where alliances between producers, collection operators, and valorization plants come in. For most industries, the collective scheme is the most viable: costs are shared, logistics are professionalized, and traceability can be certified before the authorities.

How the Cervecería Nacional–Recolectiva–Planta Renacer Model Works

The alliance published in May 2026 between Cervecería Nacional Dominicana, the organization Recolectiva, and Planta Renacer is one of the clearest examples of how that collective scheme is structured in the country. Each actor plays a distinct and necessary role:

• Cervecería Nacional Dominicana acts as the responsible producer: it finances or backs the scheme because the law requires it to demonstrate that the containers it places on the market have a recovery route. It is also the actor with the greatest capacity for scale and visibility to mobilize other links in the chain.
• Recolectiva operates in the field: it organizes the collection of post-consumer PET plastic, works with communities and collection points, and ensures that the material arrives clean and sorted at the next stage. Without a specialized logistics operator, the material simply does not reach the plant in a condition to be processed.
• Planta Renacer is the valorization link: it receives the collected PET, processes it, and reincorporates it as secondary raw material. Here the waste stops being a problem and becomes an input for new products.

The result is a verifiable closed loop: the producer generates the container, the operator recovers it from the market, and the plant transforms it. Each step leaves a traceable record that can be presented as evidence of EPR compliance.

What Waste This Model Handles and Why PET Is the Starting Point

PET plastic—the same used in beverage, water, and oil bottles—is the first material on which these alliances focus, for practical reasons. It has an established secondary market, is relatively easy to identify in the collection chain, and its valorization process is more mature than that of other plastics.

However, the model is not limited to PET. Other resins—HDPE, LDPE, PP—are also part of the waste universe that the law covers and that industries need to manage. The difference is that for those materials the local processing infrastructure is less dense, which makes the choice of processor even more critical.

What Other Industries Can Replicate

The three-actor model—producer, logistics operator, and valorization plant—is not exclusive to the beverage industry. Any sector that generates plastic waste in volume can structure an equivalent scheme. What changes are the details:

• The type of plastic: the food industry mainly generates PET and PP; the construction industry generates HDPE and PVC; manufacturing may generate LDPE film or mixed industrial waste. Each material requires a processor with specific capacity.
• The origin of the waste: post-consumer PET comes from the dispersed market and requires territorial collection. Post-industrial waste—offcuts, trim losses, rejected parts—is already concentrated at the plant and is easier to move. For this second type, the alliance can be more direct: producer and valorization plant without the need for a territorial logistics operator.
• The volume: alliances work better when there is a critical mass. If your company generates a small volume of a specific type of plastic, it may make more sense to join a collective scheme with other producers in the same sector than to try to structure one on your own.

What the Cervecería Nacional model demonstrates is that an EPR alliance is not just a legal construct but a real operational chain. Whether it works depends on each link doing its part well: the producer finances and commits volume, the operator guarantees collection, and the plant guarantees valorization with traceability.

What Mistakes to Avoid When Structuring This Type of Alliance

Many companies that try to set up an EPR scheme for the first time make the same mistakes. Identifying them in advance can save you time and resources:

• Choosing a processor without verified technical capacity: not everyone who claims to process plastic has the infrastructure to do so at volume and with the quality needed for the resulting material to have commercial value. Visit the plant, ask to see the process, and find out who they sell the processed material to.
• Not defining who certifies what: an EPR alliance requires documentation. From the start, establish what records each party keeps, how often they are reported, and how the evidence is consolidated for presentation to the authorities.
• Underestimating the collection logistics: waste does not reach the plant on its own. If the scheme depends on dispersed post-consumer material, you need an operator with real territorial presence. If the waste is post-industrial, you need to define collection frequency, storage conditions, and transport responsibilities.
• Assuming the model sustains itself: successful EPR alliances have a coordinator who maintains communication among the actors, monitors each party's compliance, and makes adjustments when something fails. Without that role, the alliance dissolves into the day-to-day operations of each company.

What to Consider When Evaluating a Plastics Processor as a Partner

If you are already clear that you want to structure an alliance, choosing the processor is the most important decision. These are the criteria that make the difference:

• Real installed capacity versus declared capacity.
• Types of resins it can process and the form in which it delivers the material (pellets, flakes, agglomerate).
• Customers to whom it sells the resulting material, which validates that the cycle truly closes.
• Capacity to issue traceability documentation that you can use as EPR evidence.
• Experience working with industrial waste, which has different characteristics from domestic post-consumer waste.

Scrapmen Recycling Group as a Valorization Link

Scrapmen Recycling Group works with post-industrial and post-consumer plastic waste in the Dominican Republic, processing it to reincorporate it as raw material in the production chain. If your company needs a specialized processor that can function as the valorization link in an EPR alliance—or that simply manages your plastic waste with traceability—Scrapmen can be the part that closes the loop.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a medium or small company also required to comply with the Dominican EPR Law?

Law 225-20 applies to producers, importers, and distributors regardless of their size, although the regulations may establish different thresholds or deadlines depending on the sector. If your company places products with plastic packaging on the market, the most prudent course is to verify with a legal advisor whether you already fall within the scope of the regulation.

The important thing is that even if you are not yet formally required to comply, structuring a waste management scheme now is easier than doing so under regulatory pressure.

What is the difference between managing post-industrial and post-consumer waste?

Post-industrial waste is generated within the production process: offcuts, trim losses, rejected parts, production surpluses. It is concentrated at a single point, tends to be less contaminated, and is easier to move in volume. Post-consumer waste is what the end consumer discards: used containers, packaging, products at the end of their useful life. It is dispersed, may be dirty, and requires territorial collection.

Many companies have both types at the same time and can manage each one with different schemes depending on its origin.

How do I know if the material I generate has value for a processor?

The value of a plastic waste for a processor depends mainly on the type of resin, the available volume, and the level of contamination. Resins such as PET, HDPE, and PP have more active secondary markets. If you are not sure, the most direct approach is to contact a processor, describe the material you generate—type, approximate quantity, condition—and ask whether they can accept it.