Putrefying

It is time for impatience at the very least, and vigilance, too. Lest the matter be completely forgotten in the welter of unresolved scams and scandals, a coalition of environment and civil society organizations is urging the Canadian government to take back a shipment of waste that has been sitting unclaimed in the Manila Container Port since last year.

“We’re asking Canada to take it back,” Richard Gutierrez of Ban Toxics, one of the groups in the coalition, said of the putrefying shipment. “What’s taking it so long? This is a threat to the Philippine environment, not to mention public health. If they were able to smuggle used diapers into the country, what more can they push through?”

The coalition has launched an online petition on Change.org and collected 7,500 signatures as of last week. In the petition it is to lodge with the Canadian Embassy in Manila this week, it said “garbage juice” from the 50 40-foot containers “is now leaking and [posing] extreme health hazards and irreversible environmental problems in our country.”

“…[T]his illegal trade or unlawful importation violates the rights of the parties under the Basel Convention,” the coalition pointed out, adding that the Philippine government has also lost over P36 million in storage fees because of the space that the containers continue to take up at the port.

The Basel Convention is an international agreement to which 180 countries, including the Philippines and Canada, are signatories. It is aimed at preventing hazardous materials from being dumped by wealthy countries on poor countries, with Asia identified as the top area of the so-called “toxic trade.”

From reports, the Bureau of Customs discovered last Jan. 21 that the shipment of “scrap plastic materials for recycling”—sent to Manila by Chronic Inc. in Ontario, Canada, through its consignee based in Valenzuela City, Chronic Plastics—is actually made up of waste including soiled diapers and household refuse. The containers had arrived in six batches from June to August 2013. The misdeclaration is in clear violation of the Toxic Substances and Hazardous Wastes Control Act of 1990.

Chronic Inc. has denied wrongdoing and insisted that it shipped only plastics. The BOC has charged Chronic Plastics with violation of the Revised Penal Code, the Tariff and Customs Code, as well as the 1990 Toxic Waste Act. “We should not, and the BOC will not, allow that our country will become a garbage dump,” Customs Commissioner John Sevilla was reported as saying in February.

The BOC has also sought the assistance of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in sending the garbage shipment back to its place of origin—Canada, ironically known to be among the world’s most environment-friendly countries. According to Deputy Customs Commissioner Ariel Nepomuceno, the Basel Convention requires “the exporting country to take back waste materials if the receiving country refuses to accept them.”

This is an issue that has to be continually harped on to make clear that the Philippines is not a dumping ground, nor should it be forced to be. The petition of the coalition—the other members of which are the party-list group Ang Nars, Ateneo School of Government, Ecowaste Coalition, Green Convergence, Greenpeace, Mother Earth Foundation, and Public Services Labor Independent Confederation—serves to deliver that message. In response, the Canadian government has said in a statement that it “encourages and expects all Canadian companies working around the world to respect all applicable laws and international standards, to operate transparently, and to conduct their activities in a socially and environmentally responsible manner.” But it says nothing about taking back the toxic shipment.

It is imperative that the Philippine government takes a firm stand against this violation of an international safety agreement and local laws. The private sector, as represented by the coalition and the signatories to the petition, has stepped in and declared its involvement in the effort to persuade the Canadian government to act. As we have earlier said in this space on the issue, public vigilance remains crucial.