Lucrative or destructive?

Foreign waste is once more an issue, this time involving electronic waste (e-waste), with environmental groups claiming that the possibility of the Philippines becoming a dumping ground is very real.

Last Thursday, the group Ban Toxics claimed that at least 234 containers of suspected e-waste and one container of plastic waste from the United States have reached Subic Bay Freeport since March. The Philippine-based nongovernmental organization advocating for the elimination of toxic chemicals, hazardous waste, and illegal e-waste shipments, raised concerns that the country could become a dumping ground for foreign hazardous waste. It showed aerial footage of suspected electronic waste shipments from the US allegedly being stored and processed in facilities inside the free port.

The Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA), however, quickly refuted the dumping allegations, saying that imported materials are legally brought in for recycling and are subject to strict government monitoring. It also clarified that the materials seen in the footage were for recycling and processing—not dumping—that are being legally done and accredited under the SBMA Ecology Center and other national regulatory agencies.

End-of-life electronics

Electronics segregation, collection, and disposal are governed by Republic Act No. 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000. This law mandates local government units and businesses to enforce waste segregation and systematically handle solid waste to protect public health and the environment.

With the evolution and advancement of technology, the world has seen an increasing amount of discarded electrical and electronic equipment, or end-of-life electronics over the past decades. The United Nations’ 2020 Global E-Waste Monitor report estimates that global e-waste will exceed 74 million metric tons by 2030. The Philippines is among Southeast Asia’s top e-waste generators, generating 4.7 kilos per capita in 2022 from 3.9 kilos per capita in 2019, according to Ban Toxics.

E-waste has also become a lucrative source of precious metals, and under a “circular economy” arrangement, several areas in the country, not only Subic Bay, host treatment, storage, and disposal facilities for them. The collection and segregation of e-waste from households have also given informal recycling or scrap workers an additional source of income. But this has also raised questions about whether the extraction and recycling, 87 percent of which takes place at the informal sector level, are safe.

Environmental burden-shifting

Mayang Azurin, deputy director of Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives Asia Pacific, said the concern over e-waste goes beyond whether they are legal or not. “E-waste is not merely a source of minerals—it contains toxic substances that can contaminate air, water, soil, and threaten the health of workers and surrounding communities,” she said.

She warned that this could be a case of “environmental burden-shifting, where wealthy countries and corporations export the costs of their consumption while communities in the Global South bear the pollution, health risks, and ecological damage.”

E-waste aside, there have been several high-profile cases of waste shipments to the Philippines that were deemed illegal under the Basel Convention, which sets limits on hazardous waste shipments between countries and regions.

In 1999, 122 containers of hazardous medical and household waste had to be shipped back to Japan from the Philippines—the first time that the Japanese government had accepted the return of waste shipped abroad.

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Used adult diapers

In 2013 and 2014, Canada transported 103 shipping containers that were supposed to contain recyclable plastic, but were instead found to contain a significant amount of unrecyclable waste, including used adult diapers. In 2016, the Supreme Court ruled that the garbage should be returned to Canada. It took three more years before the illegal waste was finally shipped back.

In 2019, the Bureau of Customs (BOC) intercepted containers of mixed garbage, this time from Australia and Hong Kong, at the Mindanao Container Terminal in Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental. The shipment from Hong Kong, in particular, was found to contain mixed garbage consisting mostly of plastic scraps and shredded electronic parts, which were marked “assorted electronic accessories.”

In 2020, the BOC reexported 100 container vans of contaminated plastic waste to South Korea from the Port of Cagayan de Oro.

These cases show how, for years, many businesses have exploited the loopholes in customs declarations, with the Philippines finding itself in diplomatic disputes over waste. The government must continue to address the legal gaps and penalize importers, as well as tighten monitoring of recycling centers.

More importantly, the government must confront the question of environmental sensibility. Does it make sense to allow foreign waste into the country when we can barely even properly manage domestic waste?