IS THE PHILIPPINES the world’s dumpsite?
In light of the Canadian and Korean garbage dumping incidents, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) should consider banning plastic waste importation. It should impose tough measures that will prevent discarded plastics that could no longer enter China from being diverted into the Philippines due to loopholes in existing regulations.
With the ban on plastic waste imports in effect in China since 2018, we could be seeing increased waste exports from South Korea to the Philippines. Data from the Korea Customs Service published in November last year indicated that the 2017 waste exports from South Korea to the Philippines rose from 4,398 tons to 11,588 tons after China closed the door for plastic waste and other waste imports from overseas. Waste exports from South Korea to Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan also increased. On the other hand, South Korea’s waste exports to China dropped from 119,575 tons in 2017 to 9,379 tons in 2018.
Waste traders from industrialized countries are frantically looking for places with lenient regulations where their plastic waste can be shipped for so-called “recycling” like what we have seen in the controversial plastic garbage shipments from Canada and South Korea. We need to take action now, like what Malaysia and Vietnam did, before it’s too late. Vietnam stopped issuing plastic waste import licenses in July 2017. Their waste imports went from 2,000 – 5,000 tons per month to 300 – 400 tons per month. Malaysia made the same move reducing their plastic waste imports from 1,000 to 2,000 tons per month in 2017 to 56 tons in 2018. Malaysia last October 2018 also announced its plan to phase out imports of all plastic wastes in three years.
We need to adopt new stringent policies to prevent the importation of plastic and other types of waste. We do not want our cities, provinces – and the whole country for that matter – to become a global garbage dump.
It’s our shared responsibility to proactively prevent plastic wastes, which often come unsorted and contaminated with hazardous materials, from entering our ports. Stringent policy measures should be adopted, including banning the importation of waste plastics, which should be treated at source and not sent to developing counties like ours.
We should send a clear message to waste traders and traffickers that our country is not a dumping ground for the world’s trash. Disallowing plastic waste importation will compel governments and industries to think of innovative ways to prevent the creation of garbage and ensure their environmentally-sound management at the country of generation.
