LIKE it or not, we have been used to a lifestyle swamped with plastics —bags, bottles, containers and disposable product packages. 

This 19th-century invention has given life in marketplaces, workplaces, offices and homes a kind of convenience we are probably unwilling to part with, even if we know that plastic trash is killing our seas and choking our waterways.

Charles Moore, in a 2001 Algalita Marine Research Foundation video transcript, estimated that plastic debris in oceans weigh six times more than all zooplanktons in the seas.

Despite education and awareness campaign against indiscriminate use of plastic products, the production and demand for this petro-chemical byproduct continue to expand over the years.

Von Hernandez, Greenpeace-Southeast Asia campaign director, had that the one probable reason why there is so much foot-dragging on the part of Philippine government in addressing the hazards of excessive use of plastics is not lack of awareness, but the billions of pesos plastic-recycling industries in the country is getting from the business.

Another reason is that most people have found plastic bags and Styrofoam good companions in the market places, grocery stores and in the kitchen.

Convenience

The demand for plastic bags and plastic-based packaging materials is surging, thriving on an almost folkloric belief that it is cheapest, most reliable, most convenient and easiest to get rid of compared with other substitute materials.

The Polystyrene Packaging Association of the Philippines, a group producing food-packaging products, said in product promotion pitch: With today’s fast-paced lifestyle, society requires a fast and reliable way of being served fresh, clean food in most convenient and safe way. This is one advantage of polystyrene that reusable or paper packaging cannot offer—speed and reliability.

Polystyrene (PS) comes in many shapes and forms, from foam egg cartons and meat trays, to soup bowls and salad boxes, from coffee cups and utensils to CD “jewel boxes,” and from produce trays to “peanuts” used in packing and the lightweight molded foam that cushion new appliances and electronics.

Virtually, there is no corner in our homes, offices and even in our lives untouched by plastics. The abundance of the material has somehow ushered in a culture of “disposables” or a consciousness that nothing actually has lasting value.   With the help of plastics, we have come to know the convenience of a use-and-dispose lifestyle—disposable lighters, bags, diapers, cups, bottles, and name it, modern life has it— disposable partners, too?

Convenience without responsibility is the cause of plastic pollution, Eduardo de Vera, UP mountaineer and environmentalist said.  The plastic recycling industry is not accountable for the single-use plastic products during post-use phase. Consumers are free from the burden as soon as the garbage truck drops by to collect trash in plastic bags.   Sanitary personnel are free after they have dumped the garbage in landfills.

Back in the late ’80s, a young housewife jokingly complained that bayong (native woven bag) is inconvenient when a member of the Balik-Bayong movement suggested to her the use of bayong every time she goes to the market.  She said it is so messy and inconvenient.  “I cannot imagine lumping inside the native bag the squid, the tilapia, the bangus, the pork I bought without individually putting them in plastic bags,” she said.  “Besides, I don’t have time to wash and dry the bayong for next use,” she added.

Limits to Recycling

Plastic products can be recycled, but there is limit to it.  Greenpeace’s Hernandez doesn’t even call it recycling, but downcycling.   Down the line there will come a point where the quality of the recycled plastic becomes very poor, but the cost of recycling outweighs the value of the resulting product.

Most of recycling efforts have failed. The primary reason is that most of plastic wastes get soiled and contaminated, which requires washing prior to reprocessing. Moreover, people involved in the materials recovery processing are having difficulties in handling soiled PS packaging shells since these are being rejected by plastics recyclers.  Soiled foamed PS can be processed into lightweight construction products.  After this lowest point in the process, recycling is no longer beneficial.

Hernandez also noted that the Philippines has no strong petrochemical industry, and that those in plastic recycling business import “garbage plastic” not the so-called virgin resins or pellets.

In fact, Hernandez said, developed countries have already banned these “garbage plastic resins,” which local manufacturers make into plastic bags and other low-grade products that are highly toxic.

For instance, Hernandez said, the Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) is highly toxic because it is chlorinated, and that burning of this type of plastic releases dioxin, a cancer-causing substance.  

PVC plastic type is the one used as material for water bottles, salad dressing bottles, detergent bottles, cooking oil bottles, shampoo battles and mouthwash bottles, among a host of other products.  

Rene Salazar, director of the Southeast Asia Regional Institute for Community Education (SEARICE), said that a “Mafia-like export companies are enticing Third World countries with potential profits to be made from trade in toxins, adding that his group has a complete list of all the imports of waste into the Philippines in 1991 and demanded that government should tell the people where the toxins went.

SEARICE said that from February 1 to March 31, 1992 alone there were 58 shipments of this plastic garbage export to the country or a total of 5,385,902 pounds (more than 2 million kilos).         

Options

Hernandez said we cannot completely do away with plastic products.  These are already part of our modern lives.   But we should be more careful and discriminating in our use of it.  Above all, stakeholders (manufacturers, consumers, that government) must take responsibility for the hazards plastics bring to our shared environment.

On the demand side, there is a need to rethink of our consumption pattern and the use especially of single-use packaging types of plastic, Hernandez said.

Environmental sustainability should be given higher value over convenience, efficiency and lower prices of plastics, he added.

He also said that the solution is already in the law, in which the framework of how to deal with solid plastic wastes is mandated by RA 9003.

For instance, the National Solid Waste Management Commission, which is mandated to implement the ecological management act, specifically in listing down highly toxic and undesirable plastic types used in various packaging product, should do its job, he said.

He observed though that of the members of the commission, two representatives come from the plastic industry, two from government and one from non-government organizations. With the composition, a truthful listing of toxic products would be hard to come by.

On a brighter note, Hernandez said there are examples of successful experiments in the reduction of plastic rubbish.   One is the Dhaka approach, where the government imposes outright ban on the use of plastic bags in some places, especially in sensitive ecological systems like river networks.

Another is the Ireland approach, wherein the government imposes higher taxes on plastic products to discourage wanton use of plastics.

Hernandez also observed that in the Philippines, plastic manufacturer, producers, and retailers make a killing on their business because they are totally free from the responsibility of the cost of disposal.

Greenpeace suggests that some kind of a “sin tax” should be imposed on the plastic industry.

Because of the proliferation and wide consumer acceptance of cheap plastic products, the development of alternative materials has been pushed at the margins, and that no businessman in his right mind would venture into doing a business that would surely lose for lack of patrons.

Because of this, Greenpeace was forced to do a thing it always hates to do.  After the press conference it organized on the issue of the oil spill in Guimaras aboard MY Esperanza, it served food to the members of media in plastic bags and Styrofoam.