Manila must send garbage back to Seoul

THE Philippines and South Korea – there’s a love affair.

Over a million Korean visitors have arrived so far this year, accounting for some 22 per cent of the total tourist arrivals as of August, making South Korea the Philippines’ top tourism market.

Filipinos have reciprocated by becoming one of the fastest-growing tourist markets as well for South Korea, with a good portion of them visiting the sites popularised by Korean telenovelas and movies.

So what utter distress to hear news of something that the Philippines can’t welcome in any form from South

Korea: 5,100 metric tonnes of garbage – including used diapers and dextrose tubes, batteries, bulbs and electronic equipment – that were sent to the Philippines four months ago, and have been sitting since then in an ecozone in Misamis Oriental.

Documents from the Bureau of Customs office in Cagayan de Oro City show that the baled garbage arrived from South Korea at the Mindanao International Container Terminal (MICT) on July 21 on board MV Affluent Ocean.

The 51-container shipment – consigned to South Korean firm Verde Soko Philippines Industrial Corp, which runs a waste recycling facility on a 4.5ha lot in an industrial zone in Tagoloan – was wrongfully declared as containing “plastic synthetic flakes” when it was, in fact, packed with garbage.

According to the Depart- ment of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the South Korean firm was not registered as an importer of recyclable materials; thus, it faces charges over the misdeclared items.

“This shipment from Korea can be considered the biggest shipment of waste that has entered the country,” declared an MICT report. It’s “outrageous and unacceptable,” said EcoWaste national coordinator Aileen Lucero. “Why do we keep on accepting garbage from other countries when we know that our country’s plastic waste, which is literally everywhere, is spilling to the oceans and endangering marine life?”

It’s ironic, Lucero added, that while South Korea is taking action to control its own plastic waste, such as banning plastic bags in supermarkets starting October this year, its unwanted plastics are being sent abroad.

“It’s high time for the Philippines to disallow garbage imports and to demand that developed countries, as well as manufacturers of plastics and other disposable goods, take full responsibility for their products throughout their whole life cycle,” she said.

The case is rankly reminiscent of the 55 containers of garbage that entered the country in 2013 from Canada, the shipment also misrepresented as recyclable plastic scraps.

That waste is still in the country, and serves as “a stinking reminder” of the unjust global waste trade, said EcoWaste.

Iligan City Representative Frederick Siao has demanded that Verde Soko and the shipper based in South Korea pay for all expenses involved in returning the garbage to South Korea.

The South Korean government should also intervene, “because they’re also one of the parties of the Basel Convention in 1989, wherein it is stated that any illegally trafficked waste should be returned to its point of origin,” said Environment Undersecretary for Solid Waste Management Benny Antiporda in a TV interview.

Indeed, the Philippines is not a trash bin, whether of Canada, South Korea or any other country.