Time to stop using single-use plastic products
While typhoon Tisoy brought rains to our metropolis, it didn’t bring the rains that we needed to spruce up our aquifers. Although it rained harder in the afternoon, but I’m not complaining like most of the Philippine Airlines passengers whose Cebu-Manila-Cebu flights were cancelled as typhoon Tisoy made landfall in Sorsogon. That the typhoon supposedly affect some Southeast Asian Games is unfortunate, alas we can’t control the weather.
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I read in The Philippine STAR news that Quezon City under Mayor Joy Belmonte has proposed to ban single-use plastic, which I understand that the City of Mandaue has already enacted into a law. However, at this point, we should already take a good look at the many products found in the market today that use a single plastic container. For instance coffee or tea in plastic bags are still very much around, or cream, and I’m only talking about coffee. What about cookies or chocolate snacks? Most of them use plastic that still ends up in the mouths of fishes or whales.
I was reading a report in CNN news (not on TV) and I learned that Coca-Cola was once again named the world’s largest plastic polluter for the second year in a row. Apparently this report came from the non-profit group Break Free from Plastic that tagged the Atlanta-based company as the biggest producer of plastic waste. Come now, if Coca-Cola is the largest polluter, who are the other big polluters in the world? Coca-Cola was number one, with almost 12,000 Coca-Cola products found in 37 countries across the world and they are followed by Nestlé and PepsiCo.
Here at home, the small tinda or food stalls that sell food in small plastic bags are the number one polluter. However, they are nothing compared to what Coke or Pepsi are doing to pollute our environment. What about the single-use water bottles made of plastic? Wow! The list just goes on! But to our comfort, at least people are now accepting the reality that these plastics end up in the ocean and eaten by marine life and it kills them.
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We learned that the Supreme Court rejected the appeal of government lawyers seeking the reversal of its previous decision acquitting former president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of plunder for the alleged misuse of P366 million in intelligence funds of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office. The SC voted 11-4 affirming its July 19, 2016, ruling which granted Arroyo’s filing of a demurrer to evidence for the criminal case she was facing in the Sandiganbayan. This brings us to the issue of the grave injustice that then Pres. PNoy Aquino III gave to his predecessor.
Of course, this was with the help of then Department of Justice Secretary Leila de Lima who may have won as a senator, but is now facing the same thing that the former president suffered during her time. As most pundits would say, “Life is weather-weather lang.” But the least that Aquino should have done was spare the former president. After all, people did not believe that she would run away from justice.
Of course the government lawyers tried to have this decision reversed.
However, Theodore Te, the high court’s spokesman said, “Thus, any attempt to reconsider the decision would amount to double jeopardy.” I’m sure that Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is extremely happy that finally the truth about her presidency is no longer in doubt. It was simply false news perpetrated by the yellow supporters of the Aquinos that put her in jail. Now all this is in the past.
Meanwhile, still on the Sandiganbayan news, the Sandiganbayan has affirmed its earlier dismissal of a P1.052-billion civil forfeiture case against the Marcos family and their alleged cronies due to the insufficient evidence presented by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG).
In a three-page resolution promulgated on November 20 and obtained by reporters, the court’s Second Division said the PCGG failed to raise any new issue or argument in its motion for reconsideration that would warrant the reversal of its September 25 ruling dismissing the case. After so many decades we are finally getting the real news about the case against the Marcoses.
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