Ban single-use plastics

ACCORDING to the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternative (GAIA) report “Plastics Exposed”, each day the country produces around “164 million pieces of sachets”, “48 million shopping bags” and “45.2 million pieces” of so called “plastic labo bag”.

What do people do after using these single-use plastic (SUP) bags? Let’s be honest. They throw them away. These plastic bags end up anywhere, everywhere.

In the report “Plastic & Health: The Hidden Cost of a Plastic Planet, “…roughly two-thirds of all plastic ever produced has been released into the environment and remains there in some form — as debris in the oceans, as micro- or nanoparticles in air and agricultural soils, as microfibers in water supplies, or as microparticles in the human body.

Once in the environment, plastics slowly fragments into smaller particles where they contaminate the air, water and soil, accumulate in food chains, and release toxic additives or concentrate additional toxic chemicals in the environment, making them bioavailable again.

We are drowning in plastics and dying inch by inch from their toxic releases. We’re having a plastic pollution crisis. SUPs, which are designed for the dump (or for the fire), clearly have no place in an environment designed for perpetual recycling of resources that will truly promote and sustain life and health of this planet’s inhabitants.

In view of this, the only way to deal with SUPs is to phase them all out. The country in fact has an existing law, the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000 or Republic Act 9003, which has clear mandate in Sections 29 and 30 to the National Solid Waste Management Commission to list down for a scheduled phase out non-environmentally acceptable products and packaging.

The law clearly singles out SUPs and similar products in its definition of non-environmentally acceptable in Section 3 (m): “re-usable, biodegradable or compostable, recyclable and not toxic or hazardous to the environment.”

We can’t drown in single-use plastics. Ban them now.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here