Plastic wastes make up 76% of Manila Bay garbage

GREEN advocates EcoWaste Coalition and Global Alliance for Incinerator
Alternatives (GAIA)yesterday reiterated their call to recycle and
reuse plastic bags which clog drainages and waterways to avoid a
repeat of the floods brought by tropical storm Ondoy last year.

"Let us not forget the lessons of typhoon Ondoy and together let us
break the plastic habit and cut our waste size," said Gigie Cruz of
GAIA.

Some cities in Metro Manila were submerged in floodwaters from Sept.
25 to 26, as Ondoy dropped almost a month’s worth of rainfall
measuring 455 millimeters. The death toll was 341.

"Typhoon Ondoy taught us in a deeply painful and costly way that
practices which defile and destroy the ecosystems have no place in our
fragile planet and should stop," said EcoWaste president Roy Alvarez.

Alvarez said plastic bags and other disposable items made the
post-Ondoy cleanup most difficult.

"By switching from disposable plastic bags to reusable bags and
containers, we will dramatically cut our waste size, and clean out our
waterways and dumpsites, which are bursting at the seams," he said.

A discards survey conducted by EcoWaste and Greenpeace in 2006
revealed that plastic bags and other synthetic packaging materials
comprised 76 percent of the four cubic meters of garbage retrieved
from Manila Bay.

Of the 76 percent, 51 percent were plastic carry bags, 19 percent junk
food wrappers and sachets, five percent styrofoam and one percent hard
plastics.

The rest of the recovered trashes were rubber at 10 percent and
biodegradable waste at 13 percent.

A study published in 2009 by the US-based Ocean Conservancy showed
that 679,957 of over 1.2 million pieces of marine litter of various
types gathered in seaside areas during the 2008 International Coastal
Clean-Up Day in the Philippines were plastic bags.

Posted in: plastic waste