To: 19th Congress of the Philippines

Pass a national ban on single-use plastic!

We are calling on the 19th Congress of the Philippines to urgently pass a comprehensive bill banning single-use plastic packaging and products.

Single-use disposable plastic is a major source of pollution in the Philippines. These disposable plastic products come in various forms such as, but not limited to, sachet packs, bags, cutleries, cups, and PET bottles which are meant to be used only once, before being thrown away. According to GAIA, more than 163 million plastic sachet packets, as well as 48 million shopping bags and 45 million thin-film bags are used and disposed of daily in the country.

Most of these plastics are produced by multi-billion dollar companies such as Nestle, Unilever, Mondelez, Coca Cola, and Pepsi Co. However, it is the taxpayers—ordinary Filipinos like you and me—who pay to clean up the waste these companies create.

Steps are already being undertaken to mitigate plastic pollution, but all of these are mere band-aid solutions. Even if a piece of plastic is “thrown away properly”, it would still end up somewhere—in landfills where they contaminate soil and water, or worse, in incinerators, cement kilns, or so-called waste-to-energy facilities that emit carcinogens and other pollutants of concern. From production to disposal, single-use plastics pose significant threats to public health and ecology.

Put simply, single-use plastic is not a clean-up problem but a pollution problem; the only way to prevent it is to stop its production and avoid using them in the first place.

A comprehensive national ban on single-use plastic will not only “clean up” the plastic problem, but will ensure that no more harmful disposable plastic will pollute our cities, beaches, and mountains, kill wildlife and marine life, and threaten our health.

The end-goal of this petition is to urge the 19th Congress of the Philippines to pass a bill banning the production, importation, distribution, and use of all single-use plastic products and packaging. We aim to garner support from all Filipino people, who are the true victims of plastic pollution, in demanding accountability and action from our policymakers for this climate emergency.

Photo Credit: © Miguel Hernandez