Conclusion
The responsibility of businesses I am continuing the topic I started writing about last week: Sustainability in business, communities, fashion and tourism. The insights come after the Sustainability Summit Manila that was held on October 5 at Colegio de San Juan de Letran in Intramuros. Sonia Mendoza, the chairman and founder of Mother Earth Foundation, was there to talk about the waste management efforts of her organization.
One of the powerful things that she shared on that day had to do with the waste and brand audit that Mother Earth conducted with GAIA (Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives) from 2017 to 2018. GAIA and Mother Earth are part of the worldwide movement #breakfreefromplastic which calls on corporations to reduce their production of single-use plastic packaging. The study, conducted in five cities nationwide, revealed that multinational brands are the top plastic polluters. Their trash comprise almost 75 percent of all collected nonrecyclable and noncompostable waste.
Aside from choking our seas and killing marine life, plastic ends up in our bodies after we eat seafood that ingested plastic particles. Although coastal cleanups are a great display of cooperation and concern for the environment, Mendoza believes that it does not address the root cause of the problem. Millions of people buy and use single-use plastic every day and it will never stop as long as there are huge corporations producing them. This is the plastic packaging for our noodles, coffee, shampoo, ready-to-drink juice, and other similar products.
Businesses need to shift to new and environment-friendly ways to distribute their goods. Additionally, there needs to be a policy change implemented by the government as mandatory regulation for corporations. National plastic bans and plastic packaging reduction policies will help in the implementation of Republic Act 9003, or the Philippines’s Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000.
The government, for its part, should also promote zero-waste programs because this has been proven to address the problem. Mendoza shared that Mother Earth’s model communities all over the Philippines have shown that zero-waste programs result in significant reduction of waste management costs, improved livelihood for waste workers, and of course, cleaner and greener environment.
After the brand audit, Mother Earth and GAIA wrote to the concerned businesses to encourage them to implement new solutions. However, the response they received was less than satisfactory.
As ordinary citizens, we can petition for the creation of environmental policies like the EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility). According to Mendoza, this is a strategy wherein manufacturers become responsible for the packaging of their products up to the end of its life cycle. It will encourage them to look for alternative delivery systems for their products. In other countries with EPR regulations, there have been significant reduction in the consumption of single-use plastic packaging. Advocates believe that if we have that here, too, it will positively affect us and our environment in general.