Senator Cynthia Villar has sponsored a bill pushing for extended producer responsibility on wastes.
Villar, who chairs the Senate Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Climate Change, said the “globe is in the middle of a climate emergency” and that there is a “need to find the strategic interventions to drastically redeem what would have been valuable materials from the waste stream.”
Senate Bill No. 2425, under Committee Report No. 328 refers to “An Act Institutionalizing the Practice of Extended Producer Responsibility on Plastic Packaging Waste. This would amend Republic Act No. 9003, otherwise known as the “Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000.”
“This measure seeks to incentivize innovation, motivate producers to take charge of the life cycle of their products, clearly defines responsibilities and mandates, and allows for better citizen participation in reaching objectives and goals,” Villar said.
If done properly, she said that Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is also an opportunity, and “an open door to a thriving industry that pushes us into a circular economy where materials cycle through lives and less land is lost to dumping and waste storage.”
Without an EPR system, Villar said back trips of trucks and ferries will not care to carry discards for reuse, recycling, or processing.
Although those that make the products that become discarded in very short periods have always had the ethical responsibility, Villar said they do not have the legal responsibility to ensure the recyclability and upscalability of their products and packaging.
“The pandemic has both complicated and multiplied this problem tenfold. Hence, this Chamber must act decisively and effectively to pass a law that would have a high rate of compliance,” she said.
Around the world, she said, there is abundant evidence that EPRs have allowed municipalities and taxpayers to deflect the financial burden of waste management and transferred it to producers.
“More importantly, EPR systems have resulted in decreased volumes of waste for final disposal and ushered in thriving recycling industry. And many of these companies. that succeeded also market their products here and would likely have little difficulty in merely exporting their success as they export their products and manufacturing.”
She recalled the July 10, 2000 Payatas landslide or the garbage dump that collapsed at Payatas, Quezon City which claimed the lives of 218 people.
The senator related that it was a horrific reminder that our society was an abject failure at managing our wastes so that the next year, Congress passed the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act.
But still, Villar stressed open dumpsites have remained operational. Mixed wastes are being collected in urban areas. She said there is no National Ecology Center and the burden of waste reduction, segregation, and management mostly fell into the lap of households and the local governments.
She lamented our country has been notorious, named in several reports as one of the top dischargers of marine plastics. A 2015 University of Georgia study revealed that the Philippines, ranked third, next to China and Indonesia (among 192 countries surveyed), in terms of the volume of plastic wastes produced by the population that goes into the ocean.