House tax bill – new front in drive on plastics

Another front in our national effort to meet the problem of plastic garbage was opened in the House of Representatives last Tuesday when its Committee on Ways and Means approved a bill for a tax of P20 per kilo on single-use plastic shopping bags.

The measure, once enacted into law, would raise P4.8 billion a year, according to Rep. Jose Salceda of Albay, chairman of the committee. The money will be used to enforce the Solid Waste Management Act of 2000. But more than the billions the bill is expected to raise, the new law will serve to encourage markets and stores around the county to provide paper, instead of plastic, shopping bags for their customers.

In the Senate, there are already two bills banning single-use plastics filed by Senators Francis Pangilinan and Cynthia Villar.

Bags are the most commonly used plastic materials used in markets around the country today. Housewives used to have rattan baskets, buri bags, abaca sacks, cloth and paper containers of all kinds to bring their purchases home. But since the advent of plastics, these have all been replaced by plastic bags of all kinds.

So many moves are now being taken in our country and the rest of the world in the wake of the finding that mountains of plastic garbage are rising in the world’s oceans, threatening sea life which mistake it for food. If nothing is done, the problem would be unthinkable in the coming decades and centuries for the plastic wastes we have today will still be around in the next 450 years.

The House bill targets plastic bags which are commonly used in our markets, but there are other single-use plastics such as spoons, forks, knives, bottles, straws, and stirrers used in restaurants. And millions of medicine tablets encased in plastic sachets are used every day. After the bill on plastic bags, the House should turn to these other products that are mounting daily in our garbage heaps.

Some local governments like that of Quezon City have banned the use of single-use plastics in restaurants. The world’s foremost users of plastic packaging for their products -- including Coca Cola Pepsico, and Nestle -- have acknowledged their part in the world plastics problem and have vowed to make their packaging recyclable, reusable, or compostable by 2025.

But perhaps the greatest contribution to this worldwide effort to stop the rising mounds of plastic around the world can be made by individuals. If all concerned took a stand in their choice of food and drinks, in their use of medicine, and in their marketing, the world’s markets, restaurants, and product manufacturers and packagers are bound to listen.