Why We Need to Shift Toward Reuse — Not Just in the Philippines

By Sonia Mendoza, Chairman of Mother Earth Foundation

Fossil fuel companies estimate that the total volume of plastic production ever produced will reach 34.000 million tons – over 4x of current production- by 2050. Only to grasp the dimension of the plastic challenge we are facing, in the Philippines we use 165 million pieces of sachets every day, 59.7 billion pieces yearly.

In Metro Manila, human activities in residential and commercial areas lead to plastic waste ending up in waterways, especially creeks that feed into the Pasig River, eventually flowing into Manila Bay. Cities near the Manila Bay, Malabon, Navotas, Las Piñas, Parañaque  cities are adversely affected by flooding.

This waste not only intensifies floods but also endangers coastal ecosystems. In the ocean, it contaminates marine habitats, harms coral reefs and depletes marine biodiversity. Litter is harmful to people, animals, and the natural environment, as it can threaten their existence and evolution. The major impacts involve the danger to public health, the risk of fire hazards, endangering, or even killing wildlife, and the serious damage to waterways.

With more than 200 cities and communities practicing Zero Waste (ZW) solutions, communities exemplify ZW by establishing systems for decentralized management of segregated waste while creating job opportunities. However, despite the very successful ZW practices in some cities and communities these are often burdened with plastic waste that they are not equipped to handle. There is a need for a national approach to create systems that remove packaging waste from the environment, like a Reuse Bill. This will be complementary to the EPR Law.

Well-designed system brings funding to cities and includes Waste Pickers and Waste Workers, while also removing the burden for companies of having dedicated collection or logistics. Single-use containers invasion over the last decades have been displacing local zero waste systems.  We have some new initiatives on refill and reuse which we want to get to scale.

We have successfully partnered with  community stores and community eateries to adopt the reuse and refill containers to reduce the use of single use containers. There are more than one million of these community stores and eateries.

We count on many opportunities:

    1. Cultural Practices. Existing habits of reuse and bulk purchasing in many communities
    2. Cost savings. Significant potential for cost reduction for consumers, retailers and eventually products
    3. Adaptable for remote geographies. Refills are especially suitable for mountain and island ecosystems with limited recycling infrastructure for single use packaging.
    4. We still have a good share of refillable packaging for soft drinks and beers which need to be renovated and expanded. DRS, will conserve resources, cause less water and land pollution. Right now, we can start with a DRS for soft drinks and beers.

And we are facing different challenges:

    1. Limited participation by popular brands in refill systems hinders scalability and widespread consumer adoption.
    2. Lack of consistent refill policies create hurdle for refill business owners.
    3. Financing or investment, logistical limitations and infrastructure gaps.

We strongly believe there will be less litter and clutter in the Philippines, especially in urban areas, including the junk shops, if there are no single use beverage packaging and a DRS system is in place.