A study on plastic wastes generated by coastal countries and entering the oceans should serve as a wakeup call to the Philippine government, the industry, and the public in general. It placed our country the third highest plastic waste generator. This is what we’ve been talking about. Seventeen years of poor implementation of the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act (Republic Act 9003) and unheeded calls for a national ban on the undoubtedly problematic and persistent plastic bags apparently helped a lot in putting the country at the third place in the study’s embarrassing list. We are a nation of seafarers and fishers, not sea destroyers polluting the oceans with plastics and toxics.

Plastic pollution. (2017, July 1). Panay News, p. 8.