Trash causing a stink
For two years, it’s been straining Canadian-Filipino relations, prompting protests, petitions, stern-worded political threats and even a demand for an official government inquiry.
As 50 shipping containers full of Vancouver garbage continue to rot in Philippine ports, officials in the Asian nation remain adamant that Canada should “take back its waste.”
“The waste is just there in our port,” said a statement last week by Philippine Senator Loren Legarda, one of the main campaigners against the Canadian trash.
Legarda was speaking at a hearing where Philippine senators were told that the 2,500 tonnes of Canadian trash was violating both “domestic laws” and international garbage treaties.
“That makes it very clear that Canada should take back its waste,” said Legarda.
The trash, which is all sourced from the Vancouver area, was shipped to Manila in early 2013 by Ontario’s Chronic Inc.
Although the containers were labelled “scrap plastic materials for recycling,” inspectors with the Philippine Bureau of Customs instead reported finding the containers stuffed with rotting household waste and soggy paper.
The discovery incensed Philippine politicians and environmental groups, who accused Canada of pawning off its garbage on poorer countries.
“I will not tolerate this matter sitting down,” Leah Paquiz, a member of the Philippine House of Representatives, said last year. “My motherland is not a garbage bin of Canada.”
EcoWaste Coalition, a prominent campaigner against the garbage, has warned the Philippines is being transformed into a “global trash bin.”
In May, protesters — one of whom was dressed as a shipping container filled with garbage — staged a demonstration outside the Canadian Embassy.
And although the country’s diplomatic staff have assured parliamentarians that they are firing off diplomatic notes and raising the issue in calls to the Canadian minister of foreign affairs, they have been accused of dawdling.
“Canada was treated with kid gloves,” Senator Francis Escudero said last month.
The owner of Chronic Inc., Jim Makris, has dismissed claims that the containers contained garbage, saying that it would be infinitely cheaper to dump garbage in Canada rather than shipping it across the Pacific. Also, he said the containers don’t point to any large scale smuggling operation: At 2,500 tonnes, the containers represent less than a day’s worth of trash from Metro Vancouver.
Part of the ire can be traced to the fact that while the containers hold common household waste, many campaigners became alarmed by early reports that the waste is “hazardous” and “toxic.”
“It can have bacteria. It can even cause cancer. It can go up the air. When you inhale, it can cause mutations and can cause cancer,” Anna Kapunan, a representative of Ban Toxics, said last July.
An online petition signed by 40,000 people similarly made the hyped claim that the household trash represented “irreversible environmental problems” if left on Philippine soil.
Toxic or not, though, foreign garbage is a sensitive subject in the Philippines.
In 1999, Philippine officials intercepted 120 Japanese shipping containers that were similarly found to be packed with waste. In that case, the Japanese government chartered a ship to repatriate the garbage — and vowed to prosecute the company responsible.
“The Philippines is not the garbage dumping site of Japan. The Philippines is not also the dumping area of Canada,” Escudero fumed recently.
Canada has maintained throughout that it has no mechanism to force Canadians to repatriate overseas trash.
In July, the Philippine Bureau of Customs abandoned attempts to have the garbage sent back to Canada, and ordered the garbage to a landfill in the Philippine province of Tarlac.
Disposal crews had only emptied 29 containers, however, before the move was halted by Tarlac Governor Victor Yap.