Ending the scourge of plastic waste

A piece of good news emerged early this week, though it was nearly drowned out by the political noise surrounding Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ Environmental Management Bureau (DENR-EMB) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), along with other partners, have joined forces to develop guidance that could become standardized measures for “upstream interventions,” meaning steps manufacturers can take to reduce, if not eliminate, plastic waste at the start of production (see “DENR, UNDP draft EPR rules for plastic waste prevention,” Nation, 7/14/26).

The focus of this key undertaking is to develop strategies to address the persistent plastic problem in the Philippines—only 9 percent of plastic is recycled—which affects not only our waterways and coastlines but also the open environment nationwide. The broader context of this public-private partnership is that effective waste management can safeguard the country’s blue economy—a sector comprising fisheries and aquaculture, maritime transport, and tourism.

These strategies to reduce plastic waste at the source include plastic “reuse and refill systems, packaging redesign, material reduction, and the use of recycled content initiatives,” UNDP-Philippines said.

These measures are a direct response to a sobering reality. The Inquirer.net story pointed to an estimated 839,300 metric tons (55.56 percent) of the 1.51 million metric tons of plastic waste generated in the Philippines last year, which “was projected to be mismanaged through open dumping, burning, littering, or inadequate waste collection and disposal.”

In other words, the problem is not just how we consume plastic—which is a lot—but whether the systems are in place—and adequate—to capture plastic waste after we discard it. Plastic leakage has remained a major problem despite the passage of Republic Act No. 11898, the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Act of 2022, which finally assigned responsibility to large companies that are obliged by law to recover the plastic packaging they generate.

But as I noted in my earlier columns, the law shockingly covers only large enterprises with assets exceeding P100 million or employing 200 or more employees, while exempting manufacturers or product producers classified as micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) from the compulsory waste-reduction requirement to recover or remove the equivalent of the carbon footprint generated by their plastic packaging. This is mind-boggling, as MSMEs are the most numerous, accounting for 99.6 percent of all registered businesses in the country. Congress has an opportunity to rectify this during the mandated review of the law’s effectiveness next year.

Exempting MSMEs that produce plastic packaging doesn’t lessen the country’s carbon footprint, as plastics and climate change are deeply intertwined. Producing plastic generates global greenhouse gases, and 99 percent of plastics are made from fossil fuels (see https://tinyurl.com/56eskfy7). The global plastic crisis harms human health, impacts biodiversity, and pollutes the environment.

Reducing waste generation. Here’s why the DENR-EMB and UNDP partnership is crucial to solving our own share of the plastic problem: it will tackle the elephant in the room—producers that generate plastic waste.

The UNDP said as much: “But beyond product waste recovery programs, the law also recognizes upstream interventions that reduce waste generation at source and improve circularity. These include reuse and refill systems, redesign, recycled content, and other measures that may contribute to plastic waste footprint reduction, resource efficiency, and circular economy outcomes by keeping materials in productive use for longer” (https://tinyurl.com/yc4ykyr3).

To advance the next stage of plastic action, UNDP states that governments and businesses are focusing more on cutting down unnecessary plastic use, expanding reuse and refill initiatives, redesigning products and packaging, and boosting recycled content as key efforts toward a circular economy transition.

This is crucial because, regardless of how consumers recycle plastic on their own, if product manufacturers persist in using plastic packaging for almost all products without a.) proportional waste recovery efforts, b.) incorporating recycled materials into their new products, and c.) redesigning products to remove disposable packaging, then any waste management system is doomed to fail.

Although starting with large enterprises to recover, recycle, and reuse the plastic waste they generate is a welcome move, it’s inadequate because smaller companies are exempt from doing EPR. Moreover, reducing plastic packaging waste remains the surest way to lessen plastic leakage, and thus the onus rests with all product producers, big and small, to eliminate plastic waste from the outset of production through product redesign and the use of recycled content.

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