Senator Cynthia Villar will spearhead today a legislative inquiry on efforts to reduce plastic waste leakages into the seas.
Villar, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, said the probe will look into existing government and private sector measures to arrest the prevalent leakages that pollute the country’s waters.
A University of Georgia study entitled “Plastic waste inputs from land into the seas” showed that the Philippines was ranked third, next only to China and Indonesia, among 192 countries surveyed in terms of estimated volume of mismanaged plastic wastes that could potentially enter the seas and oceans.
“This report is quite alarming amid the presence of abundant findings that the presence of plastic wastes in the seas adversely affects the marine life and eventually the world’s food chain,” Villar said.
The senator noted that in her regular coastal cleanup activities at the Las Piñas-Parañaque Critical Habitat and Eco-Tourism Area and the Baseco Compound in Manila Bay, she witnessed firsthand “the overwhelming presence of plastic wastes in the waters and shorelines, mostly made up of packaging materials and sachets of diverse products or brands, ranging from shampoos, conditioners, candies, biscuits, junk food, coffee, milk, and detergent, mostly made, distributed or sold by well-known manufacturing firms operating in the Philippines.”
“To my mind, a ‘business as usual’ approach in reducing the plastic waste will barely contribute to efforts in reducing the prevalence of plastic wastes and its leakage into our seas. Bolder and more innovative measures should be undertaken not only by the national government and the local government units, but by all sectors,” Villar said.
“More particularly, I believe that the active participation of commercial manufacturers and distributors are crucial in initiatives to substantially reduce the generation of plastic wastes,” she added.
In Las Piñas, Villar said, plastic wastes were recycled into school chairs and donated to public schools around the Philippines.
