Villar wants manufacturers to help curb plastics pollution

FILE: Sen. Cynthia Villar (PNA photo)

MANILA — Senate environment committee head Sen. Cynthia Villar wants to give manufacturers more responsibility in helping reduce plastics pollution.

Villar said a planned amendment to Republic Act 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, seeks to increase product stewardship among manufacturers nationwide to help minimize pollution from plastic packaging materials of goods.

Villar believes RA 9003 must include provisions on extended producer responsibility (EPR), an approach which requires manufacturers to be responsible for their products even after selling these, like recovering, reusing, and recycling discards from their products.

“That’s part of amendments I’m planning for RA 9003,” she said at the 2018 Zero Waste Month celebration and 4th Eco-Waste Management Summit in Metro Manila this week.

She said reusing and recycling plastic discards are among recovery strategies manufacturers can look into.

RA 9003 states that solid waste “shall refer to all discarded household, commercial waste, non-hazardous institutional and industrial waste, street sweepings, construction debris, agricultural waste, and other non-hazardous/non-toxic solid waste.”

“Solid waste management (SWM) shall refer to the discipline associated with the control of generation, storage, collection, transfer and transport, processing, and disposal of solid wastes in a manner that is in accord with the best principles of public health, economics, engineering, conservation, aesthetics, and other environmental considerations, and that is also responsive to public attitudes,” it says further.

Government and non-manufacturers are among those recovering from the environment assorted discarded plastic packaging materials and other solid waste.

“There should be shared responsibility among all of us when it comes to SWM,” Villar said.

This year’s zero waste management celebration and the eco-waste summit helped highlight the urgency for shared responsibility on solid waste management.

The National Solid Waste Management Commission (NSWMC) said the country generates an estimated 36 tons of waste daily.

Metro Manila is the country’s top waste-generating region and produces nearly 8,300 tons of waste per day or about three million tons of waste per year, the NSWMC also said.

Such waste generation levels continue raising calls for manufacturers to take environmental considerations into account when developing products.

Villar said solid waste remains an environmental challenge in the country.

She’s optimistic amending and updating RA 9003 will make the law more relevant to the times and promote more effective solid waste management nationwide.

“Times are changing and new challenges are arising. So much has happened since the government passed RA 9003 17 years ago,” she noted. (PNA)