Ang Nars Partylist Representative Leah Paquiz, together with civil society groups, on Thursday reiterated the call for the re-exportation of 50 container vans – 18 of which contained waste, including household garbage, plastic bags, and adult diapers – beIng stored at the Manila International Container Port since last year.
According to Greenpeace toxics campaigner Abigail Aguilar, the shipment began arriving from Canada in June last year. Despite documents showing a certain “Chronic Plastics” as the consignee and a “Chronic Inc.” as the shipper, no one had come to pick up the shipment.
The Bureau of Customs decided to open the container vans in January, which was when the putrid discovery was made.
This was a far cry from the declaration that the cargo contained recyclable plastic scraps.
Ang Nars political affairs officer Anna Marie Kapunan said “garbage juice” was already leaking from the containers when the Department of Health-Bureau of Quarantine inspected them in March.
Apparently, 16 of these container vans were moved to Subic Port last month to ease the congestion at the Port of Manila.
“I filed for a Congressional Inquiry in aid of legislation regarding the unlawful importation of the 50 container vans filled with garbage. Clearly, this is a reflection of our dignity as a nation,” said Paquiz.
Meanwhile, EcoWaste Coalition President and Greenpeace Southeast Asia Executive Director Von Hernandez said the transfer of the shipments was proof that “plans are afoot to have the waste shipments disposed of in the country.”
He claimed that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources had proposed to have the waste disposed here.
During a press conference in April, Sonia Mendoza of Mother Earth Foundation said that Canada was in violation of the Basel Convention, which states that waste, especially the hazardous kind, cannot be transported by countries outside of their borders.
Both Canada and the Philippines are party to the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, which was adopted in 1989.
But neither one has ratified the Basel Ban Amendment which totally prohibits the transportation of hazardous wastes from industrialized countries to developing countries.
The groups said that allowing the shipment to be disposed of here would “set a wrong precedent for other countries to follow suit.”
The Philippines, they added, was possibly being primed to be the world’s toxic waste dumping ground in the guise of promoting “green jobs” in garbage recycling.
“Ano ‘to, basurahan lang ba tayo? (Are we mere dumping grounds)?” Ban Toxics Executive Director Richard Gutierrez said.
If the Philippines did not take a stand, he said, Canada – along with other developed countries – would keep doing the same to other developing countries.
The economic waste trade, said Gutierrez, occurs when one passes on the most difficult waste to manage by taking advantage of a country’s lax law enforcement, cheap labor, and the lack of awareness of the country or community regarding the waste it is being sent.
As the exporter cuts costs, they send it to the poorest country who will take the waste at minimal cost. The rest, said Gutierrez, is subsidized by the health, environment, and community bearing the brunt of the waste.
“How can we segregate that waste? It’s an insult to the Filipino people for us to be saddled with managing that,” said Nina Galang of Green Convergence.
To solve this decades-long problem, said Gutierrez, countries must take action and communicate to their global neighbors that they should do the right thing. The most important step is ratifying the Basel Ban Amendment, which the Philippines should do, too, he said.
View “Re-export the 50 (40-footer) container vans filled with mixed waste and trash from the Philippines to Canada,” the petition created on advocacy platform Change.org at www.change.org/DiBasurahanAngPilipinas. It has over 23,000 supporters so far.
