Bare Truth by Rose de la Cruz
Bare Truth

Firms using plastics must pay for pollution

Apr 29, 2023, 12:18 AM
Rose De La Cruz

Rose De La Cruz

Writer/Columnist

Now that the country is essentially dry and hot is when local and national government agencies must focus on removing plastic wastes on drains and waterways that, during heavy rains, would cause heavy flooding in entire towns or cities.

The culprit often are those plastic packaging—sachets, plastic bottles and straws, cigaret butts, plastic dinner wares and cups, and other solid wastes and of late, even face masks—that are wantonly disposed on the streets by mindless robots (a more apt description of mindless humans) walking or plying the main roads.

When I walk the dogs in the morning and at night, I shudder at how carelessly people regard the streets as a big trash can where they throw their junk food wrappers, their juice packs and even softdrink plastic bottles, and massively cigaret butts even if garbage bags of houses are on sidewalks waiting to be picked up by the garbage truck contracted by the city.

A study done in 2015 showed the Philippines as the third worst plastic polluter in the world with 1.88 million tons of plastic wastes each year.

Under RA 11898 or the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Act of 2022 tasked the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to form a speakers’ bureau to communicate and promote compliance with the law. The agency has started a series of training in partnership with the United Nations Development Program “to equip its concerned workers with the proper knowledge and skills to effectively spread information about the EPR law” among stakeholders from the private sector, local government units (LGUs), and waste diversion organizations.

In the National Capital Region, most LGUs have ordinances to regulate (ban) single-use plastics in public market dry goods’ section and supermarkets. But the burden is usually slapped on the consumers. Whereas the law puts the responsibility on the plastic producer and companies using plastics for packaging, requiring them to recover a certain percentage of their wastes, or pay a fine of from P5 to P20 million at the risk of suspension of their business permit on the third offense.

For 2023, obliged companies must recover 20 percent of their plastic footprint from the year before. Covered by the EPR law are corporations with total assets of over P100 million, which are expected to allocate resources to support the collection, recovery, transport, processing, recycling, and disposal of plastic packaging wastes in ways that do not harm the environment.

A cleanup undertaken at the reclamation area of Manila Bay by Greenpeace last September n2017 found sachets of instant coffee, milk powder, food seasoning, shampoo and toothpaste that comprised 32.82 percent of plastic wastes collected in the weeklong activity. Many of the thin plastic and aluminum-packaged products are manufactured by giant multinationals and global brands.

“It’s time these companies stop [their] business-as-usual practices and use their resources to innovate and redesign their packaging and delivery solutions,” said Greenpeace Philippines campaigner Abigail Aguilar in 2017.

These firms can afford to invest in proper disposal facilities and fund research to develop alternative packaging, as some have already done with styrofoam made from corn and other organic biodegradable materials. Plastics take 450 years to fully decompose. It just degrades into small pieces called microplastics that are ingested by fish, shellfish, and other marine organisms, which ultimately humans consume.

The “polluter pays” principle or the EPR obligates companies that manufacture or use plastic packaging to assume full responsibility for the entire life cycle of harmful plastic waste, and pay for the cost of waste prevention, clean up, and recovery measures, a burden that LGUs cannot manage because of their limited resources.

Companies covered by the law can translate their responsibility into green measures that include segregating waste at source and collection and redesigning existing packaging to biodegradable materials. Or they can set up centers where consumers can redeem deposits on glass and plastic bottles as well as aluminum cans, a practice popular in other countries.


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