Manila Bay cleanup marks World Oceans Day

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Environment and Natural Resources will determine the sources of sacks of garbage recovered during a cleanup in Manila Bay as part of World Oceans Day commemoration, DENR Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga said yesterday.

“We will conduct an audit to find out the sources of this trash. The reason that we need to do that is we can prevent the garbage from reaching the ocean, rather than picking it up,” Loyzaga said.

At least 1,000 people participated in the Manila Bay cleanup where sacks of plastic bottles, woods, metals, Styrofoam, clothes and face masks were retrieved.

“We are concerned with our plastic pollution, our marine litter in general. We are hoping that cleanup activities will help us in managing the quality of oceans,” Loyzaga said. “Solid waste has reached our oceans. We need to secure our oceans and our future here on the land as well.”

Environment Undersecretary Jonas Leones expressed alarm over the increasing threat of microplastics.

“Microplastics do not only end up in water, microplastics also mix with the air. We don’t have equipment to recover these waste,” Leones said.

The garbage recovered during the coastal cleanup will be brought to the San Mateo landfill in Rizal. Loyzaga said under Republic Act 11898, also known as the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Act, large-scale companies should establish a mechanism for the recovery of their plastic packaging. The Philippines was cited as the third largest contributor to ocean plastic, with approximately 0.75 million metric tons of plastic ending up in the seas and other waterways annually. With the EPR law, corporations with total assets of over P100 million are required to recover a certain percentage of their plastic packaging waste, or else pay fines.

The DENR chief said companies should be responsible for allocating resources to support the collection, recovery, transportation, processing, recycling, and disposal of plastic packaging waste in environmentally-sound ways.

The EPR law sets incremental targets that should be fulfilled yearly until 2030.

For 2023, obliged companies must recover 20 percent of their plastic footprint from the year before.

Fines ranging from P5 million to P20 million will be imposed for failure to comply with the law and meet the target recovery rates of the EPR, Loyzaga said.