“We do not even have the capacity to manage our local trash problems, yet the Aquino government forced our country to become a global dumpsite.” – Clemente Bautista, Kalikasan PNE
By DEE AYROSO
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – Environmentalist groups today, July 20, picketed the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (Denr) main office in Quezon City to protest the government agency’s approval to have tons of Canadian hazardous waste dumped in the country’s landfill.
The Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE) said President Aquino has “demonstrated a clear lack of backbone” by assenting to dispose in Philippine soil of 98 container vans of Canadian trash, which entered the country in violation of local and international laws.
Twenty-nine of the 98 container vans had already been dumped at the Metro Clark Waste Management Corporation in Capas, Tarlac province early this July, amid calls from environmental groups to ship the waste back to Canada.
Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Zarate, who joined the protest, also filed today House Resolution 2220 calling on the committee in ecology to investigate the dumping of the “toxic imported garbage” from Canada.
In March, before Aquino’s meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Canada, the Denr said the Canadian waste was “not toxic” and approved of its disposal in the country. This was a reversal of the agency’s statement in 2014 which declared the waste as hazardous and ordered its return to Canada.
Environment groups, such as Ban Toxics, Greenpeace, Eco Waste Coalition and Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives assailed the agency’s turnabout, which, they said, violates the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, and the DENR Administrative Order 28, or guidelines on the importation of hazardous waste.
The groups also condemned the surreptitious disposal of the 29 container vans in Tarlac, which the groups said was made without a proper court order, or a technical assessment of the toxic content of the wastes.
The groups said the container vans are the subject of 14 legal cases filed by the Department of Justice against Adelfa Eduardo, the owner of the Chronics Plastic Inc., which imported the wastes.
Government has been forced to look for alternative dumping site after the Tarlac provincial government had stopped the dumping of more Canadian waste, and begun an investigation on the issue.
‘Trash diplomacy’
“This government practices trash diplomacy,” said Zarate. “Other countries have already trampled on our sovereignty, and now even another country’s garbage is being dumped on us,” said Zarate.
Some government officials have claimed that “diplomatic problems” may ensue, if the Philippine government insists on shipping the trash back to Canada.
Zarate, however, cited the case in 1999 when the Philippine government complained about the entry of illegally exported “clinical waste” from Japan, which the latter consequently shipped back to its own soil, in accordance with the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control on Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes. The Basel Convention bans the transshipment of wastes, including toxic materials.
“Aquino, DENR and the rest of the inter-agency have done nothing but make excuses, supposedly for diplomacy’s sake,” said Clemente Bautista, national coordinator of Kalikasan PNE.
“The Canadian government is clearly denying its international obligations to prevent trans-boundary pollution, violating so many environmental laws in the Philippines in the process, so there really is no reason to give up our sovereignty and ecological integrity to them,” Bautista said.
Since June 2013, 50 container vans containing the Canadian trash had sat unclaimed and rotting in the Philippine Ports Authority in Manila, while another 48 container vans were later discovered in Subic port. In January 2014, the container vans, labeled as “recyclable materials,” were discovered to contain mixed wastes including electronic materials, household wastes, broken bottles and unrecyclable plastics, Ban Toxics said.
Anna Kapunan, chemicals management coordinator of Ban Toxics, said that in accordance with the Basel Convention, a government will be required to ship back its exported wastes, within 90 days upon filing of a complaint by the recipient country. She, however, doubts that the Philippine government had filed any complaint of violation of the convention.
She said that in a congressional inquiry into the issue last year, government agencies, such as the Department of Foreign Affairs, had failed to present a copy of any complaint it sent to the Basel Convention.
‘Global dumpsite’
“We do not even have the capacity to manage our local trash problems yet the Aquino government forced our country to become a global dumpsite,” Bautista said.
Bautista said the country “is grossly insufficient to accommodate even domestic waste output. As of 2013, only 7.29 percent of 1,500 local government units have a sanitary landfill, while only the City of San Fernando is considered fully compliant with the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, or RA 9003.”
Kalikasan PNE also called for the enactment of House Bill 5578, which aims “to strengthen the policy foundation of opposing the transshipment of hazardous wastes in the Philippines,” Bautista said.
The proposed bill was filed in congress this year by the Makabayan bloc to “to improve the country’s management of waste,” amending Republic Act 6969, the Toxic Substances and Hazardous and Nuclear Wastes Control Act. 
It’s President Aquinos fault it’s the elite owners of the your country who selected him and the sheeple who elected him. Election is a farce. Voting is immoral.
Just got back from Calgary Canada, and it is sure is very clean. A land stolen from the natives hundreds of years ago. Well folks that’s the world order we have today and the another hundreds of years to come. Third world countries will be the supplier of materials, skilled slaves, and garbage dumping ground of the first world countries. Because the third world countries are always beholden and smitten to the hollywoodism fake beauty of the first world countries (Rich Western). Poor countries will always have corrupt governments to benefit the Rich western world. Deal with it. Unless you guys are brave enough to scuttle the western cultures of hollywoodism and too much worshipping of stupid movie stars and sports stars.