THE whole world, including our own Philippine government, has finally come to grips with the worldwide problem of plastic pollution – millions of tons of plastic wastes filling our lands and our oceans yearly, there to lie and accumulate for hundreds of years, because most plastics are non-biodegradable.
Bits of plastic have ended in the stomachs of whales and other sea creatures, causing their deaths. Scientists have now found that most plastics break down into small fragments called microplastics, which end up in the flesh of fish that get eaten by humans. There is increasing fear in the world today that such minute plastic bits ending up in the food chain may pose danger to human life.
Before this finding on microplastics, we were more familiar with the more common reports of plastic bags, styrofoam wrappers, and other rubbish blocking waterways, worsening floods and providing breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
The United Nations Environment Program has estimated that at the present rate of plastics use and disposal, there will be about billion tons of plastic in landfills and in rivers, lakes, and oceans by the year 2050. The most common of these plastic wastes, it said, are cigarette butts, drinking bottles, bottle caps, food wrappers, grocery bags, lids, straws, and stirrers.
In the Philippines – which has been named with China and Indonesia as one of the top three sources of plastic wastes in the world’s oceans – bills have now been filed in both the Senate and the House of Representatives to regulate the use of one-time plastic products. A bill by Sen. Cynthia Villar lists such plastics as soft drinks straws, stirrers, bottles and cups, spoons and forks, and sachets for medicine. Sen. Sonny Angara’s bill seeks to regulate these materials by taxing them.
The Philippine plastics industry itself, through the 200-member Philippine Plastics Industry Association, is for voluntary reduction, along with increased production of reusables.
An outright ban on certain plastic products, regulation through taxation, and voluntary reduction of production by plastics companies – these are now possibilities with much of the debate and discussion to take place soon in the halls of Congress.
We welcome this newfound sense of responsibility among our officials and our people. We are a bit behind some other countries, such as Bangladesh which banned all single-use plastics as early as 2002, 17 years ago. But we have finally awakened to the danger of plastic pollution and will now take definite steps to mitigate our inordinate contribution to this worldwide problem.
