Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations for electronics are arriving simultaneously across Vietnam, South Korea and China in 2025 and 2026, requiring consumer tech brands to build recycling and take-back infrastructure that most have not yet constructed. The reverse logistics infrastructure (the systems and assets that move goods back up the supply chain for return, repair, recycling or disposal) required to comply with them does not yet exist at the scale the regulations demand. The brands that are not building it now are accumulating a regulatory liability that will crystallise on timelines they cannot control.

The Southeast Asia returns market gives a sense of the commercial stakes before the regulatory ones are even counted. McKinsey commercial research on e-commerce evolution in Southeast Asia projects the region’s reverse logistics market at USD 21.9 billion by 2026. In the same research, 83% of consumers indicated they would increase their online purchase volume by at least 30% if a smooth returns experience were available. Consumer electronics is one of the highest-return categories in retail. Products are returned for defect, for upgrade, for wrong specification, for refurbishment and for recycling at rates that exceed most fashion and household goods categories. The operational complexity of each of those return types differs: a defect return requires inspection and triage; an upgrade return enters a refurbishment or resale channel; an end-of-life return requires disassembly, materials separation and certified disposal.

Vietnam is constructing a multi-obligation EPR framework for electronics, with mandatory recycling targets and annual recycling plan registration requirements entering the regulatory structure in the current policy cycle. South Korea is expanding its Act on Resource Circulation of Electrical and Electronic Equipment and Vehicles to require recycling of all electrical and electronic products from 2026, broadening extended producer responsibility from roughly 50 product categories to the full consumer electronics range. China is updating its Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) standard with stricter requirements for disassembly, utilisation and final disposal. The Philippines is in its own policy development cycle on electronics’ end of life handling and options. DHL Supply Chain runs an automated returns and circularity operation in Singapore, a sign that major operators are already positioning for the regulatory and commercial opportunity.

In an exclusive interview with Value Chain Asia, Hariadi Zakri set out where the system breaks. Hariadi is a supply chain researcher and doctoral candidate at the School of Business and Management, Bandung Institute of Technology, and President Commissioner of DDK, an affiliate of the Indonesian national postal operator Pos Indonesia. He brings more than 19 years of logistics and digital transformation experience across third-party logistics (3PL), freight forwarding, e-commerce and postal operations. His senior operating roles have included Chief Operating Officer and Chief Digital Officer of Pos Indonesia; Chief Executive Officer of Quantium Solutions Indonesia, the regional logistics arm of the SingPost Group; and a board position at DHL Global Forwarding Indonesia. Across those roles he built reverse logistics infrastructure reaching Indonesia’s outermost and frontier regions, and that operational vantage point grounds his account of where consumer electronics returns currently fail.

In Indonesia, returns flow through marketplaces, couriers and central hubs in Jakarta and Surabaya. The flow looks straightforward in design and breaks in execution. Hariadi identifies three points of failure. The first is poor product traceability: serial numbers and order data often disconnect during return handling, blocking the fast decisions that determine commercial outcomes. The second is geography of inspection: most devices travel too far before any assessment is made, shipping back to large hubs even when they have low resale value or clear damage, which drives unnecessary cost. The third is disposition speed: returned products sit in storage because no consistent grading standard links the repair, resale and recycling pathways. “The system fails on three points: weak data integration, late inspection, and slow decision-making,” Hariadi said.

The reverse logistics infrastructure Hariadi describes is structurally different from the forward delivery networks that brands and 3PLs commonly extend backwards. His account is grounded in Indonesia, where he has built it. Returns intake must be local, accepted at nearby postal points, retail partners and service shops across the archipelago. Inspection must happen regionally, with provincial hubs in cities such as Medan, Makassar and Surabaya handling triage before long transport decisions are made. Transport must mix sea, air and land routes on a value-priority basis, with dispatch cadence set by what each device is worth to recover. And, he argues, informal repair shops need to be integrated into the formal system. They already repair consumer electronics across the country but sit outside the data flow. “Most systems fail because they copy forward delivery networks instead of building a separate reverse flow structure,” Hariadi said.

On EPR specifically, Hariadi’s framing is that the obligation is an operational task. The physical layer requires regional storage hubs, certified dismantling centres and approved recyclers that can handle batteries and electronics safely. The systems layer requires traceability from return to final processing, with data linking producers, logistics providers and recyclers in a single reporting chain. The people layer requires trained technicians for disassembly, grading and hazardous handling. Collection is the visible part of the obligation. What follows collection is what determines whether a brand is actually compliant.

The role of technology in this is bounded. Hariadi argues that software improves coordination and speed, including return approvals, routing optimisation across islands, basic device screening and the matching of refurbished stock to demand, but cannot remove physical constraints. Indonesia’s geography creates unavoidable transport costs between islands that software cannot reduce. Repair and inspection still require people and facilities physically close to demand centres. Safe handling of damaged electronics still requires physical compliance infrastructure, such as certified dismantling sites and hazardous-handling facilities, that software cannot substitute for. Technology improves flow but does not replace physical capacity.

On the question of who is building the infrastructure to capture the projected Southeast Asia returns market, Hariadi’s read is that no current player runs the full system end-to-end. Pos Indonesia and other courier, express and parcel (CEP) networks have national reach but limited processing capability. E-commerce platforms control the returns flow but depend on execution partners. 3PLs handle transport but rarely manage refurbishment. Recyclers and refurbishers capture material value but lack upstream control. OEMs manage warranty flows but leave marketplace returns to the platforms. The market is split across five player categories without a structural integrator.

A viable consumer electronics reverse logistics business model in Indonesia, in Hariadi’s framing, combines three revenue streams. The first is fees for collection, transport and sorting. The second is value recovery from refurbishment and parts resale. The third is EPR compliance services sold to brands. The structural winners will combine national reach, in-country triage hubs and integrated refurbishment under one operator that captures the total cost of recovery inside a single P&L.

Consumer electronics returns in Southeast Asia face a geography problem that the well-funded reverse logistics models built in the United States and Europe were not designed to solve. Indonesia alone comprises over 17,000 islands. Vietnam’s electronics consumption is concentrated in urban centres, but its regulatory obligations under EPR apply nationwide. Building certified take-back and processing capacity that reaches consumers in non-urban areas is a physical infrastructure challenge before it is a technology one. The warehousing, transport and processing assets need to exist first. The digital layer that tracks and manages the flow comes second.

The global circular economy market reached USD 517.79 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 578.09 billion in 2026, an 11.6% annual increase, according to commercial estimates from The Business Research Company, a London-based market research firm. Circular manufacturing models that recover materials from electronics waste are moving from pilot to practice. The metals recovery dimension is already commercial. Smartphones and consumer electronics contain gold, silver, palladium, copper and rare-earth elements in concentrations that make certified disassembly economically viable at volume. The brands and operators that build the certified reverse logistics infrastructure for EPR compliance will find compliance and commercial value generation moving in the same direction, each activity feeding the other’s economics.

For brands operating in the consumer tech sector, the strategic question is whether to treat EPR compliance as a cost centre or as a platform for building a differentiated reverse logistics capability. The cost-centre approach leads to minimum-viable infrastructure: certified partners, basic take-back mechanisms, compliance documentation. The platform approach leads to a refurbishment and resale capability that captures value from returned and end-of-life products, a repair and spare-parts infrastructure that supports product-life extension under tightening circularity rules while generating after-sales revenue, and a data system that tracks product location and condition through multiple life cycles. The two approaches have different capital requirements and different return profiles. The platform approach requires more capital now and generates more value per product over the product’s full life cycle.

The compliance timelines belong to the regulators. Vietnam’s EPR framework, South Korea’s repairability requirements and China’s WEEE updates are policy commitments in active implementation stages, and brands cannot negotiate the deadlines. The brands that begin building reverse logistics infrastructure while the requirements are being finalised will be operationally ready when compliance becomes mandatory. Those that wait will be building under pressure, at higher cost, against a deadline. The infrastructure Hariadi describes, namely local intake, in-country triage hubs, integrated refurbishment, certified disposal and end-to-end traceability, takes years to construct.

Value Chain Asia thanks Hariadi Zakri for sharing his operational perspective in an exclusive interview for this feature.