Duterte floats idea of single-use plastic ban in the Philippines

A massive coastal clean-up was conducted in Manila Bay in January 2019, reportedly collecting 11 truckloads of garbage. Plastic waste has reached worrying proportions in the country, which has the fifth longest coastline in the world, given the amount of throw away plastic used.Image: Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte is considering a ban on single-use plastic in the country, his spokesperson has revealed. Salvador Panelo said Duterte floated the idea at a cabinet meeting on November 6 after the issue of climate change was raised, and officials from the government’s department of natural resources discussed the country’s chronic use of plastic. The president proposed the idea as Natural Resources Development Corporation president and chief executive officer Vernice Victorio presented priority programmes for the environment and climate change resiliency during the meeting, Panelo said. “The President floated the idea to ban the use of plastics which, according to him, would require legislative action,” Salvador Panelo said at a press briefing on Thursday. An archipelago of more than 7,100 islands, the Philippines has been identified as the third-worst ocean plastic polluter in the world after China and Indonesia, accounting for 5.9 per cent of total plastic waste in the world’s seas, according […]

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