Plastic’s place in the ‘new normal’

AS parts of the country are placed under varying degrees of quarantine schemes, this has caused a surge on the usage of single-use plastic due to various reasons, including a need for affordable, disposable or easy-to-clean packaging. A rise in packaged deliveries for households under lockdown has also been seen.

“We are seeing a shift in consumption patterns. More people are opting for deliveries, and that will only mean that there is more plastic packaging usage to be expected, especially for food packaging,” said Crispian Lao, president of the Philippine Alliance for Recycling and Materials Sustainability (PARMS).

PARMS is a non-profit multi-stakeholder organization that aims to develop and implement a comprehensive waste management program to increase resource recovery, such as plastics and other packaging materials, and reduce landfill dependence leading towards a zero waste Philippines.

Crispian was one of five speakers during the recently concluded online panel hosted by media organization and sustainable development advocate, Eco-business, entitled “Walang Plastikan, an honest conversation on plastic packaging in the Philippines’ food industry.”

Moreover, the online event was the first of its kind to bring together a panel of experts to tackle the issue of plastic waste in the food industry amid the pandemic that is currently gripping the country.

However, the use of plastic packaging is not something to be alarmed about. Plastic is proving to be valuable and critical to our current way of life. It helps protect food from contamination and keeps it fresher for longer so you can store it. Aside from an increase of plastic packaging use for food, there is also a sharp increase in plastic medical and healthcare materials for hospitals’ use. What we should be alarmed about is how these wastes, plastic or not, is being managed.

“If we look at waste management under the new normal, we can’t highlight enough that waste avoidance should be top priority and segregation at source is critical to any form of waste management programs,” explained Lao.

The PARMS president also touched on ways for how industries should tackle the issue of plastic waste going forward. “We need to design packaging under the new normal focused on waste avoidance and make a decision on whether a product should be reusable, recyclable, durable, repairable, have less packaging, or even no packaging at all.”