Philippine and South Korean officials have agreed to ship out by June 30 more than 5,000 tons of garbage from the Phividec Industrial Estate in Misamis Oriental.
The garbage will be shipped out through the Port of Tagoloan, some distance away from Cagayan de Oro City.
Under the agreement between Filipino and South Korean officials, VerdeSoko, the logistics company that brought in the garbage, will rebag and transport the unwanted materials from the Phividec industrial park to the Port of Tagoloan in shipping containers.
The South Korean officials, on the other hand, promised to provide a ship that would take the garbage back to their country upon notification that the unwanted materials were ready for shipping.
The agreement was arrived at during a meeting attended by Director General Yeong-Dae Jung of South Korea’s Ministry of Environment, Rep. Juliet Uy of Misamis Occidental, Customs District Collector Floro Calixihan, Mindanao Container Terminal Port Collector John Simon, Misamis Oriental Provincial Board Member Gerardo Sabal III, and Abbas Lao of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ Environmental Management Bureau’ office in Northern Mindanao.
Meanwhile, the EcoWaste Coalition, an environmental health and justice group, welcomed the agreement reached by the two sides toward the repatriation of 5,177 tons of illegal traffic waste originating from the latter.
At a bilateral meeting Friday in Tagoloan and chaired by Port Collector John Simon, government officials from the two countries agreed to return the waste, which is part of the illegal waste cargoes falsely declared as “plastic synthetic flakes” with a total combined weight of 6,500 tons, that arrived in Northern Mindanao in July and October 2018.
The meeting drew over 40 attendees led by Rep. Juliette Uy of the Second District of Misamis Oriental and included observers from the private sector and the civil society represented by the EcoWaste Coalition.
“We laud the firm stance of customs and environmental officials in the region to have the illegal traffic waste reexported to its source in South Korea. The Basel Convention imposes an obligation on the State of export to ensure the return of wastes deemed to constitute ‘illegal traffic’,” said Aileen Lucero, National Coordinator, EcoWaste Coalition.
As stated in the minutes of the meeting, “the government of the Philippines desires the re-exportation to be conducted in compliance to the order of President Rodrigo Duterte to immediately remove foreign waste as soon as possible.”
“We also laud them for rejecting outright the proposal from the Korean side to landfill or incinerate the illegal traffic waste from South Korea in the Philippines,” she added.
Under the Basel Convention, the obligation of the State of export to manage the illegal traffic waste “in an environmentally sound manner may not under any circumstances be transferred to the State of import or transit.”
The Philippine government agreed to “bear the whole responsibilities concerning the repacking, containerizing, transporting the waste from the importer’s premises to the port, and clearing the customs, including demurrage charges at the Philippine port.”
The South Korean government agreed to “start the shipping procedure from the port of Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental to Korea as soon as possible.”
“Both parties understood that in Korea it might take some time to secure and allocate the budget for shipping,” according to the minutes.
According to the re-exportation order issued by the Bureau of Customs-Region 10 last December 2018, “the shipment was found to be heterogenous and contained household hazardous waste constituting a violation under DENR Administrative Order 2013-22.”
As per this regulation, “no importation of heterogenous and unsorted plastic materials shall be allowed.
The first batch of the illegal waste shipment consisting of nearly 1,400 tons of containerized wastes was re-exported to South Korea on January 13 this year.