Less than a year before his term ends, President Duterte is being pressed by environment groups to act on their call to ban the use of single-use plastics as they assert "plastic pollution crisis should be addressed as urgently as the COVID-19 reponse."

Environment groups EcoWaste Coalition, Break Free from Plastic, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Greenpeace Philippines, Health Care Without Harm South East Asia, Mother Earth Foundation and Oceana Philippines on Wednesday sent a correspondence to the Office of the President, requesting for the immediate release of Non-Environmentally Acceptable Products and Packaging (NEAPP) list and the inclusion in it of single-use plastics.

They made the call as they said "the longer we don’t ban single-use plastics, the worse it will get.

They also said that plastic "is not just a waste management issue but a climate and health concern as well that continues to worsen due to the pandemic."

"This mandate is two decades long overdue, and the Commission only listed plastic soft drink straw and stirrer in February," Coleen Salamat of EcoWaste Coalition said in a statement.

According to them, the national government must include the following in the NEAPP list:

• plastic labo bags

• plastic bags including oxo-degradable plastics

• plastic cutleries: spoon, fork, and knives

• plastic straws

• plastic stirrers

• plastic bottles

• plastic cups and plates

• thin plastic take-out containers

• styrofoam or polystyrene food containers

• sachet, packaging, or products that are multilayered with other materials

"Our oceans are already drowning in plastics. Our existing environmental laws are powerful, it is powerful enough to end the plastic crisis. Still, the implementation falls short. The Commission is composed of 14 national government agencies. R.A. 9003 (Ecological Solid Waste Management Act) was passed twenty one years ago but to date, not much has been done to address the perils of plastic pollution.” lawyer Gloria Estenzo Ramos, Vice President of Oceana added.

In a 2020 Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey, majority of Filipinos said they were in favor of banning single-use plastic bags and containers in the country.

SWS Deputy Director Vladimyr Licudine said that the nationwide survey, which was commissioned by GAIA Asia Pacific, showed that seven out of 10 Filipinos "feel that the best thing to do with single-use plastics is to ban their use at all times."