To tackle plastic scourge, Philippines makes companies pay

MANILA, Philippines — Long one of the world's top sources of ocean plastic, the Philippines is hoping new legislation requiring big companies to pay for waste solutions will help clean up its act.

Last year, its "Extended Producer Responsibility" statute came into force -- the first in Southeast Asia to impose penalties on companies over plastic waste.

The experiment has shown both the promise and the pitfalls of the tool, which could be among the measures in a treaty to tackle plastic pollution that countries hope to agree on this year.

The Philippines, with a population of 120 million, generates some 1.7 million metric tons of post-consumer plastic waste a year, according to the World Bank.

Of that, a third goes to landfills and dumpsites, with 35 percent discarded on open land.

The EPR law is intended to achieve "plastic neutrality" by forcing large businesses to reduce plastic pollution through product design and removing waste from the environment.

They are obliged to cover an initial 20 percent of their plastic packaging footprint, calculated based on the weight of plastic packaging they put into the market.

The obligation will rise to a ceiling of 80 percent by 2028.

The law covers a broad range of plastics, including flexible types that are commercially unviable for recycling and thus often go uncollected.

It does not however ban any plastics, including the popular but difficult to recover and recycle single-use sachets common in the Philippines.

So far, around half the eligible companies under the law have launched EPR programmes.

Over a thousand more must do so by end-December or face fines of up to 20 million pesos ($343,000) and even revocation of their operating licences.

The law hit its 2023 target for removal of plastic waste, Environment Undersecretary Jonas Leones told AFP.

It is "part of a broader strategy to reduce the environmental impact of plastic pollution, particularly given the Philippines' status as one of the largest contributors to marine plastic waste globally."

The law allows companies to outsource their obligations to "producer responsibility organisations", many of which use a mechanism called plastic credits.

These allow