After the holiday shopping spree
By: C-Help Team
It seems New Year has been associated by many with buying something new for oneself and loved ones. Some buy new shoes, bags, and t-shirts for the sake of having something new to wear, or show off to others, and feel good about it.
After the holiday buying spree, waste of all kinds, including gift wrappers, plastic packaging, cellular phones, TV, radio, and kitchen appliances, including personal belongings, their life cycle could otherwise be extended for another year or two, ended up on the streets, water ways, or landfills.
According to the government’s projection, the Philippines generated 61,700.24 tons of solid wastes on the average per day, last year.
This volume of waste is enough to fill up approximately 37 Olympic-sized swimming pools according to DENR Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga who also revealed last year the alarming increase in garbage production in general.
About 24 percent of the garbage Filipinos produce are single-use plastics that somehow end up clogging canals, creeks, rivers, and streams, causing severe flooding, or worse, polluting lakes and the ocean. This is due to different factors including the relentless production of plastic by big manufacturers of fast-moving goods, and their false and misleading recyclability claims, that aggravate the poor solid waste management system in the country. When plastic production increases, plastic waste increases. UN estimates that, with the current trend in plastic production, there will be 26 billion tons of plastic waste by 2050. This level of waste generation cannot be managed sustainably.
It is false and misleading that plastics are recyclable as labelled or advertised by plastic manufacturers. Read this story about Filipino consumers who sued Coca Cola, Pepsi, Nestle, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Colgate Palmolive and Universal Robina Corp. for related information about this. Thus far, there is no record of any country having capacity to safely and completely manage, collect and recycle its own plastic waste generated domestically.
Check out this documentary Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy on Netflix. It exposes how big brands are trashing the planet. The film explores how targeted advertising, one-click purchase options, and mass production from some of the world’s largest companies are driving a new era of overconsumption, rapidly leading to a world drowning in plastic pollution.
A Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) report states that nearly 300 sanitary landfills are operating in the Philippines.
Out of 296 disposal sites, 18 are under Category 4 or those that can receive over 200 tons of garbage daily. Most of the country’s highly urbanized cities access Category 4 landfills.
The report revealed that the most massive landfills are full or filling up fast. 1 in 5 or 20 percent of Category 4 landfills, which can receive 200 tons of waste daily, have already reached their limits.
And while landfill construction was ramping up, which is not good, construction was not fast enough. According to government data, 133 out of the 296 operational landfills were set up from 2017 to 2022, the PCIJ reported. Landfills are dangerous to environment and health, read this story about it.
Current laws do not address the root of the problem
Unfortunately, although the Philippines has RA 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000 and RA 11898 or the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Act of 2022 that are relevant to waste management, these laws do not turn off the tap. They do not stop the relentless production of good and plastics that will become wastes sooner or later.
Then, these wastes do not really go away. They come back to us as air, water and soil pollution that put our health, life and environment at risk.
Our point, let’s dissociate New Year from new clothes, shoes, and things, and mind the wastes that we would contribute to the environment. It’s a good start to begin 2025. Let us keep ourselves informed and join movements that call for stopping, for example, relentless plastic production and false and misleading recycling claims.
New Year, anyway, is about new beginnings. Let’s begin it with a new motto, buy less, waste less.