Noy urged: Take out Canadian trash

MANILA, Philippines - As the country observes Zero Waste Month, environmentalists urged outgoing President Aquino to resolve the unfinished business of Canadian garbage languishing at the port of Manila.

 “We hope that the illegal garbage shipments would be finally returned to Canada before he steps down and hands over power to his successor. The new president will surely have his or her hands full and this environmental justice issue, we hope, will not add to his or her heavy load,” said EcoWaste Coalition vice president Rene Pineda.

From June 2013 to January 2014, a total of 103 shipping containers of mixed garbage from Canada, misdeclared as “plastic scraps” for recycling, entered the country in 10 batches and were subsequently intercepted by customs authorities.

After sitting at the port for months, 26 containers of trash were dumped at the Metro Clark Landfill in Tarlac between June 26 and July 8, 2015, angering local officials and residents.

Tarlac’s vociferous objections triggered preemptive moves by other local government units to bar foreign garbage in local landfills to safeguard public health and the environment.

Aquino kept the illegal garbage importation out of the official agenda for his state visit to Canada in May 2015 and during his bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the fringe of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit last November.

On Nov. 19, Trudeau announced that a “Canadian solution” is being crafted to plug the loopholes that allowed the export of Canadian trash to the Philippines but was non-committal in taking the garbage back.

Various groups have been asking the Aquino administration to ratify an amendment to the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal to prohibit highly industrialized countries from exporting hazardous wastes to developing countries “for final disposal, reuse, recycling and recovery.”