Senator Cynthia A. Villar said she is counting on the Solid Waste Management of the Philippines (SWMP) to continue doing its task of coming up with programs to clean up plastic waste in the country.
Villar said solving the problem of plastic waste became urgent because a 2015 University of Georgia report ranked the Philippines as the world’s third-largest source of plastic waste leaking into the ocean, next to China and Indonesia.
“With your expertise in solid waste management, you could do a lot in helping in the reduction of our solid wastes,” Villar, chairperson of the Senate committee on environment and natural resources said.
Villar was the guest speaker during the Solid Waste Management of the Philippines Conference 2022 (SWAPPCon 2022) with the theme “Disaster Waste Management” held in IloIlo City.
“With your help, let us strive toward our common aspiration to live in a healthy environment that will likewise benefit future generations,” she said.
The report meanwhile said 75% of the country’s collected trash goes back to the environment as mismanaged garbage.
Considering how difficult it is to collect trash from an archipelago of thousands of islands, and bring them to accredited and well-managed landfills, she branded as a “travesty“ the reentry into the environment of already-collected trash.
Villar said she has been rallying the national government, local government units (LGUs), communities and the private sector to improve waste management via composting.
She emphasized that composting, along with other efficient waste management practices, has allowed her hometown of Las Pinas City to have the lowest expense in waste management among the cities in Metro Manila.
The city saves around P300 million annually from recycling 75% of its waste. The saving go to social services, health centers, schools, and other developmental programs.
To further help in the reduction of plastic waste, the senator authored the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Act of 2022 or Republic Act No. 11898, which lapsed into law.
Villar related that the EPR Act mandates large enterprises to be responsible for the proper and effective recovery, recycling or disposal of the plastic packaging on their products after the same have been sold and used by consumers.
“I believe that many large enterprises have long begun designing their business practices around sustainability. But while these enterprises adopted the EPR framework as their ethical responsibility, it is about time that we turn this ethical responsibility into a legal one with the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Law,” said Villar.
The DENR, she said, has timely finished the drafting of the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) and “they are just polishing it, but it will be ready in time to be rolled out within the month.”
