THE SECOND State of the Nation Address of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is nearing. It is hoped that he would also prioritize – and push Congress – plastic pollution prevention measures. Legislative action is important to prevent and reduce plastic pollution. The previous Duterte administration expressed interest in banning plastics but nothing happened.
Banning plastics, particularly single-use plastics or SUPs, will have a tremendous impact on the country’s humongous waste production estimated at over 40,000 tons per day of which a huge portion is comprised of plastic residuals, according to the EcoWaste Coalition. Banning SUPs will help in curbing the chemicals and plastics choking our fragile environment.
SUPs are plastic-based materials created to be used once before they are disposed of or recycled such as bottles, cutlery, cups, sachets, stirrers, straws, and the omnipresent plastic bags and polystyrene containers or Styrofoam.
Banning SUPs will mean less throw-away plastics being produced, consumed and disposed of, less fossil fuels used and less greenhouse gases emitted, less plastic waste dumped or incinerated, and less plastic spilling into our water bodies and harming aquatic life.
Enacting a national ban on SUPs to address the plastic pollution crisis would be a game-changer. Such a law is needed to stimulate and strengthen actions by local government units to address the menace of disposable plastics. Aside from targeting SUPs for phase-out within a reasonable timeframe, the law should promote and incentivize the shift to ecological alternatives, and encourage business and industry to invest in sustainable product packaging and delivery systems.
As early as 2018, a United Nations report identified some of the environmental problems associated with SUPs, including plastic bags clogging waterways and exacerbating natural disasters, plastics being ingested by marine animals that mistake them for food, and toxic emissions from the burning of plastic wastes.
According to the UN, “Styrofoam products, which contain carcinogenic chemicals like styrene and benzene, are highly toxic if ingested, damaging the nervous systems, lungs and reproductive organs. The toxins in Styrofoam containers can leach into food and drinks.”
Another report said “roughly two-thirds of all plastic ever produced has been released into the environment and remains there in some form—as debris in the oceans, as micro- or nanoparticles in air and agricultural soils, as microfibers in water supplies, or as microparticles in the human body.
Plastic slowly fragments into smaller particles where they contaminate the air, water, and soil, accumulate in food chains, and release toxic additives or concentrate additional toxic chemicals in the environment, making them bioavailable again.
The plastic madness has to stop.
