Cecille's Creativity

The floods caused by any storm focused national attention on squatters living on the banks of major waterways and on the garbage clogging some drainage systems. But the culprit is plastic waste.

In some cities, provinces and in towns in the Philippines, mostly plastics, is disposed on landfills. But landfills are not easy to find. Thus, uncollected garbage eventually find their way into waterways heavy rain fall.

According to news, more than millions of tons of plastic is being produced worldwide, and that plastic takes up to 1,000 years to decompose.

What can be done about plastic?

In India, dirty plastic waste is used as binders in road construction and they help render roads pothole-free.

Doctor James Guillet, a University of Toronto chemist, invented in 1971 a kind of plastic that decomposes within a reasonable time for as long as it use exposed to direct sunlight. By adding starch, plastic becomes biodegradable. When disposed of in landfills, it is attacked by bacteria that feed on starch. The bacteria break the plastic down into tiny particles that disappear harmlessly into the soil.

But developed countries get rid of their waste materials by simply exporting them to countries willing to take them for " recycling". This is the key loophole in the Basel Convention which prohibits the exportation of waste materials to other countries.

According to Greenplace, the Philippines is the one country in Asia that has banned import storage or transport of all nuclear or toxic waste. In fact, between 1990 and 1993, Greenplace was able to document the shipment of more than 64,000 tons of toxic waste to the Philippines.

Thus, in order to solve the problems caused by plastic materials in our environment, local plastic manufacturers or "recyclers" be compelled to buy back all used plastic products equivalent to the volume they sell which they themselves may recycle.

In this way, our environment will be made cleaner. People will still enjoy the convenience of using plastic. The poor who make a living out of collection and selling used plastic will have a ready market. It will make plastic manufacturers drastically reduce the volume of used plastic in garbage dumps or drainage systems, without cutting much into the manufacturer's profits.