Gov’t urged: Probe illegal waste trade

The government should conduct a thorough investigation of the illegal waste trade after the Bureau of Customs (BOC) uncovered 48 more shipping containers of imported garbage left unclaimed at the Manila International Container Port, an environment watchdog said Saturday.

The EcoWaste Coalition said after intercepting 50 shipping containers of Canadian garbage last year, the BOC uncovered the 48 containers of supposed plastic scraps from Canada that arrived in four batches from December 2013 to January 2014.

The first 50 shipping containers were consigned to Chronic Plastics, Inc. in Valenzuela City, while the other 48 containers were consigned to Live Green Enterprise based in San Fernando City, Pampanga.

“We expect nothing less than an open and transparent investigation on this matter, the prosecution of the offenders and the immediate return of the botched garbage consignments to Canada,” Aileen Lucero, coordinator of EcoWaste Coalition, said.

She said the government “should use all means to get the garbage deliveries… shipped back to Canada at once and dismiss outright any proposal to have them landfilled or incinerated in the Philippines.”

The Manila City council on May 14 adopted a resolution calling for the immediate removal of Canada’s garbage.

Also on May 14, Sen. Miriam DefensorSantiago filed a resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that the government should use the “Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal” in negotiating with the Canadian government over the illicit garbage dumping issue.

The Basel Convention, which Canada ratified in 1992 and the Philippines in 1993, “aims to protect human health and the environment against the adverse effects resulting from the generation, transboundary movements and management of hazardous waste and other wastes.”

As she stated in Senate Resolution 1341, Santiago said that “the arduousness of complaint or arbitration mechanisms before an international tribunal should not hinder the government from asserting that the export of wastes from Canada violates the Basel Convention.”

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