The Philippines should ban single-use plastics, instead of imposing excise tax on them, environmentalists said.
Miko Aliño, project coordinator for Break Free From Plastics, said an excise tax may not be enough to deter Filipinos from using these items.
“Excise taxes on plastic would be a welcome development if the government would pursue a price point that will make producers think twice and perhaps consider other alternatives,” Aliño told the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.
Single-use plastics are most commonly used for packaging, such as bottles, wrappers, straws, and bags.
In his second State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday, July 24, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. asked Congress to pass a law imposing excise taxes on single-use plastics. He is the first president in the last three administrations to make such a public call to prioritize the measure.
Aliño said the excise taxes were similar to charges imposed by a few local government units on single-use plastics.
“Quezon City for example had a P2 charge on a plastic bag. Would that convince the majority of consumers to make the switch? At what price point would people consider before changing behavior?” he said.
Marcos had vowed to “clean up” the country’s plastic waste problem. “We are the third biggest plastics polluter in the world, but we won’t shirk from that responsibility. We will clean up,” he said during his inaugural speech in June 2022.
The call to tax single-use plastics is his first concrete step toward that goal.
Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno claimed the government would earn P38 billion from the measure once enacted into law. Bills seeking to impose tax on “plastic labo” or “sando bags” used to store grocery items are pending in the House of Representatives and Senate.
Environmentalists have long campaigned for a law to ban single-use plastics that would mandate corporations to rethink their packaging and “pivot’’ to environment-friendly products.
Hundreds of bills and resolutions seeking such a ban have been filed in both chambers of Congress in the past 10 years, but these have not prospered, partly due to the lack of expressed support from a sitting president.
Marcos Jr.’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, was reportedly supportive of a proposed ban on single-use plastics, but did not certify it as a priority measure.
But on Duterte’s watch, Congress passed the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Act, which mandates corporations with assets worth more than P100 million to retrieve the plastics they produce and use.
Duterte did not sign it. It lapsed into law during the first month of the Marcos administration.
Under the law, corporations are expected to retrieve 20% of the plastic wastes they produce by the end of 2023, a percentage that will increase in increments in the next five years. By 2028, they are mandated to retrieve 80% of their wastes.
The companies are also required to have an EPR program and register this with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).
In June this year, only 600 out of 2,000 corporations have registered their EPR program with the DENR, according to Secretary Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga. Non-submission of an EPR program comes with a penalty of at least P5 million. END
Are PH consumer goods companies doing enough to tackle plastic waste?
Illustrations by Luigi Almuena