The Philippine Plastics Industry Association (PPIA) has proposed the crafting of a separate law covering the responsibility of plastic product manufacturers or the so-called Extended Producers’ Responsibility (EPR) that will incentivize projects, such as recycling.
The local plastic product manufacturers pushed their position as there are moves to incorporate the EPR as a proposed in the proposed amendment of Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000. House Bill No. 10696, with a similar Senate Bill 2425, seeks to institutionalize the practice of EPR on plastic products, amending RA 9003.
EPR refers to the environmental policy approach and practice which obliged producers to be environmentally responsible for the entire life cycle of a product they produced, especially its post consumer or end-of-life stage.
PPIA President Danny Ngo explained that a separate EPR measure would be a more plausible option as a safety net should any predicaments will further derail the implementation of RA 9003 or vice versa.
RA 9003, he said, should instead be implemented fully because it is a good law, but its full potential tapped fully, primarily due to a lack of funding.
Crafting a separate EPR law is important because it is an important policy tool to help meet national targets for the recovery of post-consumer waste for recycling. “Integrating this new and to-be-tested law with the comprehensive, more than twenty-year-old RA 9003 may still be premature at this time while the latter is still being fine-tuned in addressing its lapses,” he stressed.
Ngo explained that EPR program is patterned after the first world and highly industrialized economies. Hence, its success may not be automatic or immediately felt here because the Philippines is a third-world and archipelagic country. Though its adoption may not severely affect the capability of multinational companies, particularly those who have already adopted and implemented some EPR models, more likely than not, it will have a great impact on almost all of the affected medium-sized enterprises, as the EPR is a new program for many of them, and the majority of the plastic packaging industry falls into this category, he added.
To make the EPR program a success in the Philippines, Ngo said the industry supports the granting of tax incentives, particularly to medium-sized companies to adopt the EPR scheme. Though their assets may fall within the range of P50 million to P100 million, their financial resources are limited as most of these assets are more on the technology and production facilities investments and not on operating cash.
“Amidst the ongoing and still indefinite pandemic where almost all industries and businesses are just in the stage of survival and recovery, the tax perk will serve as relief from the huge additional costs entailed in adopting the EPR,” he said.
Ngo emphasized that the domestic plastics manufacturing industry are strongly advocating for the circular economy path to be taken not only in solving the plastic waste problem in the country but also perk up the local economy with a potential estimated P100 billion revenue in pushing for the waste plastics circularity roadmap as estimated by the World Bank in their study conducted last year.
He urged for partnership with local government units civil society in promoting public consciousness, awareness, and education on EPR towards sustainable consumption and production practices that are necessary in bolstering a circular economy.