The plastic conundrum

According to the Science History Institute, the first synthetic polymer was invented in 1869 by John Wesley Hyatt, who was inspired by a New York firm’s offer of $10,000 for anyone who could provide a substitute for ivory.

The then-growing popularity of billiards had put a strain on the supply of natural ivory obtained through the slaughter of wild elephants. By treating cellulose derived from cotton fiber with camphor, Hyatt discovered a plastic that could be crafted into a variety of shapes and made to imitate natural substances like tortoiseshell, horn, linen and ivory.

That discovery was revolutionary. For the first time, human manufacturing was not constrained by the limits of nature. Nature only supplied so much wood, metal, stone, bone, tusk and horn. With the discovery of plastics, humans could create new materials.

That development, at that point in history, helped not only people but also the environment.

Advertisements praised celluloid as the savior of the elephant and the tortoise. Plastics could protect the natural world from the destructive forces of human need.

The creation of new materials also helped free people from the social and economic constraints imposed by the scarcity of natural resources.

Inexpensive celluloid-made material made wealth more widespread and obtainable.

One hundred fifty-seven years later, here we are — unable to live without plastics even as it is slowly strangling our environment.

We continue to deplete our natural resources, but  we also cannot effectively and properly dispose of all our plastic waste.

A one-day forum held Wednesday at the Makati Shangri-La, co-sponsored by the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP) and Plastic Bank, helped enlightened me on some of the global effort for Philippine companies to comply with Republic Act 11898, otherwise known as the Extended Producer Responsibility Act of 2022, which mandates a legal recovery obligation on large companies that place plastic packaging on the market.

The EPR Law sets an escalating recovery target of 20 percent in 2023, rising to 40 percent in 2024, then up to 50 percent in 2025, 60 percent this year, 70 percent in 2027 and up to 80 percent for 2028 and beyond.

The EPR Law basically amended the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000 or RA 9003, shifting part of the burden of waste management from the local governments to the producers.

RA 11898 obligates large enterprises (obliged enterprises or OEs) and even micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to recover or offset a rising share of their packaging footprint – individually, collectively or through a Producer Responsibility Organization or PRO.

A PRO is an organized group of obliged enterprises who work together to participate voluntarily.

Plastic Bank, which is basically a social enterprise and  uses fintech, acts as a PRO. It helps enterprises turn plastic waste into a currency to stop ocean pollution and help alleviate poverty.

The goal is to trade the plastic collected into cash or digital tokens secured by blockchain.

Plastic Bank’s EPR program is called the Ecosystem Activation or ESA.

Plastic Bank operates in developing countries where plastic waste often enters local waterways and oceans. It collaborates, mobilizes and incentivizes the local informal sector to collect plastic waste.

Among Plastic Bank’s clients in the Philippines are food company CDO Foodsphere Inc., Fisher Retail, Inc., which operates Fisher Supermarket and  Fisher Department Stores across Quezon City and Malabon and Eight8ate Holdings Inc., a food and restaurant group that includes Conti’s and fast food chain Wendy’s.

There are over 2,000 Filipino OEs, but only a little over 900 have registered their EPR programs with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Each OE must design and register an EPR program with the DENR. The submitted program must include plans to reduce, phase out, or offset plastic packaging, enhance recyclability, or achieve plastic neutrality.

The EPR program, however, has a traceability requirement which means that the plastics collected must be traceable from collection point, such as junk shops or from the local government units to final products such as plastic furniture or packaging. Intermediate products like flakes or pellets are not considered compliant.

Companies or OEs that fail to meet the plastic recovery targets mandated under the EPR Law are subject to a fine equal to twice the recovery and diversion of the shortfall, or a set fine ranging from P5 million to P10 million for the first offense.

The penalty for a second offense rises to P10 million to P15 million, and increases further to P15 million to P20 million, plus the suspension of their business permit until compliance in the event of a third offense.

On the other hand, the EPR Law also gives tax and fiscal incentives for compliance.

Unfortunately, during the same seminar, I was dismayed to learn from Annalyn Bautista- Alenton, a consultant for the  Marine Plastics Resource Mobilization, ASEAN Secretariat under the Southeast Asia Regional Program on Combating Marine Plastics (SEA-Map), that the current plastic recovery system still faces challenges from fragmented resources in terms of funding, infrastructure, inability of pilot projects to scale up and low investment confidence to finance the continuation of the initiative.

In Alenton’s presentation, she outlined systemic barriers that include fragmented projects, a capex and opex mismatch, weak data and MRV or monitoring, reporting and verification, market uncertainty, coordination gaps and lower recovery performance — all of which disrupts scale and financing of plastic recovery systems.

Similarly, Phillip Carl Catigay,  admin and operations chief of the Taguig City Environment and Natural Resources Office or CENRO, revealed some of the realities that face LGUs in solid waste management.

In Taguig, 1053 metric tons of solid waste is generated per day, of which only 14 percent is diverted through recycling and composting, leaving around 903 MT per day sent to disposal. Imagine adding that to the total number of  garbage  disposed by  42,010  LGUS at the barangay level as of June this year.