A BIG majority of Filipinos – seven out of 10 – are in favor of banning single-use plastics, according to a survey conducted recently by Social Weather Stations.
The respondents specified the following plastics that should be controlled – straws and stirrers, transparent bags, styrofoam or polystyrene food containers, sachets, drinking cups, cutlery, juice packaging, and water containers. A big number – 68 percent – said they wanted food condiments in recyclable or refillable containers, instead of sachets which are disposed of after one use.
The survey showed that Filipinos have become very aware of a problem that threatens the whole world today. Scientists have long warned about the mountains of plastic wastes rising in the depths of the world’s oceans, a problem that could only worsen over the years because plastic is non-biodegradable. It can last 450 years or even longer.
Much of the world learned of the problem when dead whales and other sea creatures began turning up on beaches with plastic wastes in their stomachs. Soon afterwards, scientists found microplastics in the flesh of fish that are eaten by humans. Plastic wastes have thus become a health problem for people as well.
The United Nations Environment Program has determined that at the present rate of plastics use and disposal, there will be about a billion tons of plastic wastes in landfills and in the world’s oceans by the year 2050. And the Philippines has been identified as one of the world’s worst plastic polluters, next to China and Indonesia.
In May, 2019, some 180 nations approved a United Nations agreement to regulate the export of plastic wastes. India, Australia, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, and the United States are now developing technology to process plastic wastes into asphalt mix for road construction. And companies like Coca-Cola are collecting and recycling their bottles and caps.
In the Philippines, the plastics industry through the Philippine Plastics Industry Association has announced a program of voluntary reduction by its members. Many restaurants and hotels have taken to the use of carton boxes for take-out foods. Some local governments, like Quezon City, have taken it upon themselves to ban the use of single-use plastics. There are bills to regulate the industry in both the House and the Senate.
But the single biggest effort to solve the problem must come from the people themselves – those who go to restaurants, who go marketing, who take medicine every day. The recent SWS survey shows 71 percent of the respondents said they favor a ban on single-use plastics.
They should not wait for a government ban. They should take it upon themselves to shun medicine in plastic sachets, shun plastic stirrers and straws in restaurants, and take to paper, carton, cloth, buri, abaca, and other natural materials in their marketing and other activities.
