Environmental group Kalikasan-People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan-PNE) is urging President Duterte to act on the worsening plastic pollution in the Philippines, amid calls to impose a nationwide ban on the use of single-use plastics to prevent ocean pollution.
The group said Duterte should sanction multinational corporations (MNCs) behind the importation, manufacture, and sale of environmentally unfriendly plastic products, which are now the targets of a global campaign against ocean plastic pollution.
The call came a few weeks after Environment Secretary Roy A. Cimatu’s plan to impose a ban on single-use plastic on the pollution-challenged Boracay Island in Malay, Aklan.
In a news statement, Leon Dulce, national coordinator of Kalikasan-PNE, said the Philippines has been consistently in the top 3 contributors to marine plastic pollution since 2014, but the biggest sources come from multinational corporations overseas.
“If the Duterte government does not sanction, prohibit or significantly limit the importation of excessive plastic-intensive products, then we are virtually doing nothing to address the issue,” Dulce said.