Plastic waste management is a serious challenge for Georgia. According to the agreement with the European Union, the country should gradually establish a waste management and recycling system, which provides separation, sorting and recycling. Various policy documents and action plans are being developed in this direction, both at the central and local levels. However, no one has approached this issue in a complex way yet. Consequently, different municipalities of the country, are partially separating during waste collection, however, due to the fact that there is no possibility of further separation and disposal of the separated waste, all these wastes are finally reunited and the whole process becomes meaningless. The Rustavi self-government tried to introduce a demonstration process of separation in the city with the help of partners, but this process didn't succeed.

In March 2019, with the support of UNDP Georgia, representatives of the Behavioral Insights Team (BIT) held a working visit to Rustavi, who carried out a preliminary research activity and prepared the necessary recommendations for the successful implementation of the process.

In July 2019, an inter-sectoral design workshop was held in Rustavi with the participation of representatives of the local self-government, civil society, business, educational and media sectors. The meeting was facilitated by UNDP Georgia and Rustavi Innovation Hub. At the meeting, the work cycle activities were finalized and a schedule was written.

Plastic waste collection containers were placed in 46 schools and kindergartens in Rustavi.

A memorandum of cooperation was signed between the Rustavi Municipality and the company "Sanitar", which took social responsibility and implemented the collection of collected waste for 3 months free for.

The company "Clean World" was involved in the process, where the collected waste is sorted and washed, and the company "Caucaspack" where the production of secondary products is made from this waste.

The process started in October 2019.

The work done has shown that with proper planning and effective management of inter-sectoral cooperation, it is possible to create and launch successful initiatives at no particular cost.

Active work to raise awareness is important. There have been several cases where other types of waste have been dumped in a plastic container and additional work has been required to eliminate this.

At this stage, without the support and subsidies of the municipality, it will be difficult for a similar project to work independently. Consequently, additional work is needed to create an economically viable cycle.