FINDING ANSWERS

By FORMER SENATOR ATTY.JOEY D.LINA

It looked like a bittersweet victory of some sort. Watching TV news images of the ocean vessel MV Bavaria leaving Subic Bay Freeport last Friday and carrying 69 containers of garbage on its way back to Canada can be exhilarating after all that transpired.

After being made to suffer since 2013 the humiliation of being stuck with the containers of supposed recyclable materials that turned out to be rotting household wastes, the Philippines has finally been accorded the respect that seemed nowhere to be found when it looked like all those wastes were meant to be disposed of here rather in Canada’s pristine backyard.

Some felt the issue was an assault not only on our national dignity but on our country’s self-respect. “Allowing Canada to dump their toxic garbage here is submitting to their arrogance and misplaced superiority,” Sen. Panfilo Lacson had said.

Amid the ultimate insult of being trashed by a country which many Filipinos thought was taking its own sweet time in doing the right thing, it certainly is understandable why an exasperated President Duterte became so impatient about taking out of the country the tons of Canadian trash.

Many saw it as gobbledygook, runaround, or circumlocution, and they probably were not way off in trying to describe apparent efforts to bring forth the impression that, in the words of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, “Canada is very much engaged in finding a solution” to the stinking garbage dispute.

"Canadian legal regulations prevented us from being able to receive the waste back to Canada. We had legal barriers and restrictions that prevented us from taking it back, but that's done now," Trudeau had said in November 2017 while in Manila for an ASEAN summit. Still, no concrete action had happened since.

Filipinos longing for concrete action on the trash felt that words like “swift resolution” and “prompt repatriation” frequently used by Canadian officials were simply meaningless. Many felt it was preposterous that after six years, Canada was still “examining the full spectrum of issues related to the removal of the waste with a view to a timely resolution.”

It took an outburst from President Duterte for things to move quickly. He threatened war and said he would “set sail to Canada” and dump their garbage there. The Philippine ambassador and consuls to Canada were recalled when a May 15 deadline to remove the trash was not met. The pressure on Canada was further increased when its plan to complete the trash removal by the end of June was rejected.

Besides the resoluteness displayed by President Duterte in calling on Canada to act on the pestering issue, credit also goes to the relentless efforts of environmental advocates like EcoWaste Coalition, Greenpeace, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Break Free from Plastic Movement, Ban Toxics, and other groups.

Although the tons of Canadian garbage are on its way back to the sender, the trash issue prevails as wastes from other countries like Australia and South Korea have also found its way to the Philippines. It was also reported that mixed plastic and electronic wastes have also arrived from Hongkong.

Greenpeace is urging a ban on the entry of “all forms of hazardous wastes, including those under the guise of recycling” as it called on the Philippines to ratify an amendment to the Basel Convention, a 30-year-old treaty that prevents countries from shipping hazardous waste to the developing world without consent.

The Basel Convention was amended recently to prohibit shipment of mixed, unrecyclable and contaminated plastic waste “without prior informed consent” of developing countries. “Ratifying the Basel Ban Amendment will plug the loophole that allows the shipment of other forms of hazardous waste under the guise of recycling,” Abigail Aguilar of Greenpeace Southeast Asia-Philippines said.

Apart from wastes coming from other countries, there’s also the persistent problem of local trash. Last March, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (Gaia) released findings of its five-year trash audit showing that “Filipinos were throwing away 48 million plastic shopping bags, 45 million thin-film bags, and three million diapers every day” or that “the average Filipino uses 591 pieces of plastic sachets, 174 shopping bags and 163 plastic translucent bags yearly.”

“Plastic is a pollution problem, and it starts as soon as the plastic is made. The only way to manage single-use plastic is to make less of it,” according to Gaia Asia-Pacific executive director Froilan Grate.

The trash audit conducted by Mother Earth Foundation (MEF) which collected trash samples from households in 21 selected sites across the Philippines showed that “the sheer volume of trash is beyond the capacity of local governments to manage,” according to MEF chair Sonia Mendoza.

Gauging from the current situation, it has become imperative not only to improve waste management, but to regulate the production and usage of single-use plastics, and to find other ways of packaging goods. All these are urgent to prevent the Philippines from becoming one big garbage dumpsite.

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