‘Eco Brigade’ catches, reprimands 97 anti-plastic law violators

By LITO RULONA
Correspondent . 

MEMBERS of the “Eco Brigade” of city hall’s environment office have so far reprimanded nearly 100 people and commercial establishments for violating a city ordinance against the use of plastic bags.

Engr. Armen Cuenca, chief of the City Local Environment and Natural Resources Office (Clenro), said at least 97 business establishments and individuals were found to be using plastic bags despite public notices about the full implementation of City Ordinance 13387-2010, otherwise known as the Ecological Waste Management Ordinance of Cagayan de Oro.

Cuenca said the erring establishments and individuals violated Article 9, Section 30 of the city ordinance by providing their customers with plastic bags.

“Walay violation ang mamalitay og wala ma-apil sa maong ordinance,” he said.

Specifically, the ordinance prohibits business establishment owners and market vendors from dispensing single-use plastic materials as packaging or wrapper for bought goods and items.

The city government has also campaigned for the wider use of reusable “eco-bags” as alternative to plastic packaging products.

The Clenro has created the “Eco Brigade” to do the rounds and ensure that establishments would follow City Ordinance 13387-201.

The “Eco Brigade” would keep an eye for violations and would serve as some sort of an environment police with special focus on plastic bags that have been blamed for cloggings of waterways because these are non-biodegradable.

For starters, Cuenca said, the erring establishments and individuals were only given a reprimand.

But the next time, Cuenca said, authorities would no longer be lenient and slap erring establishments and vendors with fines by as much as P3 thousand each.

“We are still warning them (violators) because the printing of violation receipts is not yet finished. The maximum penalty for every plastic bag issuance is P3 thousand,” Cuenca said.

Cuenca said he hoped other local governments would follow the example being set by city hall and come up with their own versions of the Ecological Waste Management Ordinance so as to minimize the use of nonbiodegradable plastic bags.

“Initial pa lang ni nga plastic bags or sando bags lang sa ang atong concern kay mao kini ang pinaka-dako nga volume sa atong wastes sa landfill,” Cuenca said. “Tanan nga dunay handle bawal. Ang tanan nga plastic labi na kadtong transparent i-regulate lang.”

Pria Tacandong of the Clenro said most of the violators were market vendors who asked that they be allowed to dispose their remaining supply of plastic bags.

However, Tacandong reminded the vendors that the city has already informed local businesses of the plastic ban as early as September last year.

Bencyrus Ellorin, chairman of the Pinoy Aksyon for Governance and Environment (Page), said single-plastic use ban was a welcome development as it would greatly reduce the plastic materials that usually clog canals and waterways.

However, Ellorin said more should be done to completely address the plastic waste problem in general.

“The coverage (of the ordinance) is single-use plastics like sando bags. We are still faced with the bigger problem of plastic sachets used in almost all household products. This is only part of the solution,” he said.

The local single-use plastic ban comes at a time when the Philippines has been identified as among the top contributors of plastic wastes in the planet’s oceans.

A study by the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) in 2015 said showed that the Philippines produces more than 6.2 million kilograms of plastic per day. That means 81 percent of the country’s plastic wastes are mismanaged, the agency said.

For comparison, countries like Japan and the United States similarly waste millions of kilograms per day—19 million kilograms and 37 million kgs. respectively—but both had zero percent mismanagement rating, meaning that virtually, no plastic wastes get carried into the oceans.

The Philippines joined China, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam in terms of excessive plastic waste mismanagement.

In 2017, international environmental group Greenpeace has called on the Asean to seriously draw mechanisms to curb waste mismanagement.

On June 5, 2018, in line with World Environmental Day, the Asean Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) said it has joined the movement to reduce plastic wastes for the environment in the region.

ACB Executive Director Theresa Mundita S. Lim cited that Los Baños in Laguna is the country’s first ever municipality that regulated the use of plastic bags in 2008. (with reports from PNA)