CEMEX, one of the world’s leading building materials companies, said the passage of the Extended Producers Responsibility (EPR) Law in the Philippines is a step further to address the country’s waste problem.
Luis Franco, CEMEX Philippines president and CEO, said the EPR or Republic Act 11898 is a landmark legislation, boosting the earlier efforts by the government including the implementation of Republic Act No. 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, which is an integrated solid waste management approach based on the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, and recycle).
“We take earnest steps in supporting the government and in making sure we are drivers of the circular economy. Our co-processing technology allows the increased use of wastes as alternative fuels, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” Franco said in a statement.
The EPR law requires large companies to recover the plastic packaging waste they are producing, meaning; these enterprises are mandated to be environmentally responsible throughout the life cycle of their products, especially at their post-consumer or end-of-life stage.
Covered companies or enterprises should recover wastes they produced through (1) buy-back (2) collection for reuse/recycling (3) clean-up of wastes (4) establishment of recycling, composting, thermal treatment, and other waste diversion or disposal facilities.
Beginning 31 December 2023, covered companies are required to recover at least 20 percent of their plastic footprint in 2022. The rate of recovery increases every year until it reaches 80 percent recovery rate on December 31, 2028 and every year thereafter. The failure to implement recovery measures will be penalized through fines ranging from P5 million to P20 million.
Even prior to the passage of the EPR law, Franco said CEMEX Philippines through its Solid Cement plant in Antipolo, Rizal and APO Cement plant in Naga, Cebu, which have already been supporting several companies in their plastic neutrality and waste diversion programs through co-processing.
Co-processing is a solution that converts residual wastes such as plastics into alternative fuels for cement kilns that forms part of the process in making cement. With co-processing, this avoids methane emissions in landfills since non-recyclable wastes are redirected instead to cement kilns. Methane has a global warming potential of 80x higher than CO2 in the first 20 years of release.
Co-processing is a sustainable solution and supports circular economy making it a perfect solution for EPR compliance not just at 20 percent recovery rate but even as high as 100 percent recovery thereby achieving the plastic neutrality goal of covered companies in the EPR law. This makes the Philippines at par with countries like Australia, Japan, and some countries in Europe which have similar legislation that addresses plastic consumption.
According to Franco, the passage of the EPR law creates an opportunity for Public-Private Partnership in waste management. “CEMEX supports collaborative schemes to partner with government in the management and diversion of residual wastes, and allow the private sector to contribute directly to waste management,” he said.
Franco further noted that the Philippines is one of the largest contributors of mismanaged plastics that end up in either landfills or waterways. In the recent onslaught of super typhoon Karding in Luzon, debris of plastic wastes were found in the beach area of Manila Bay which were jointly cleaned up by volunteers and government workers.