Green campaign

THE ELECTION fever is heating up. The filing period for Certificates of Candidacy for all elective positions is from Oct. 1 to 8.

Past electoral exercises were marked with widespread disregard of environmental rules and regulations. Some of the more blatant offenses that have directly or indirectly harmed the environment included the unrestrained plastering of campaign posters outside designated areas, most notoriously on trees, electric posts and walls. 

There’s also unbridled display of “indirect” political propaganda such as graduation and fiesta banners and tarpaulins; the unregulated noise from mobile political propaganda and during campaign meetings; the unchecked distribution and littering of sample ballots on election day;  the open burning of campaign waste materials which is prohibited under the Clean Air Act and the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, and the failure to avoid the use of single-use plastics and adding to the mounting plastic pollution that ends up in the waterways and the ocean.

Indeed, we have also observed the rampant use of campaign materials that are hardly reused or recycled, particularly plastic tarpaulins, posters and buntings, as well as the confetti thrown in miting de avance.

Aside from the littered sample ballots on the actual polling day, there’s also the use of disposable food and beverage containers inside the polling centers for the members of the Board of Election Inspectors, poll watchers and volunteers, and the lack of an ecological system for managing discards such as food leftovers and their single-use containers.

We hope the Commission on Elections (Comelec) will commit to greening the 2022 polls to the best of its ability and with the participation and support of all stakeholders. It must initiate much-needed reforms toward an eco-friendly conduct of campaigns. Can it make mandatory for parties and candidates to make use of recyclable and reusable materials free of hazardous chemical substances for their electoral campaign? And for them to conduct compulsory post-election clean-up?

Considering the problems already plaguing our society due to garbage, plastic pollution, climate change and COVID-19, Comelec must champion much needed policies and practices that will protect our fragile environment from being further degraded by the avalanche of partisan political activities.