‘Plastics ban may mean job losses’

The Climate Change Commission has declared that it will “strongly pursue” restricting the use of non-biodegradable plastic bags but will still consider the mission’s effects on the plastics business and the jobs it provides.

“We have to be practical with the approach.  Just like any good thing, there’s always a trade-off,” Commission Vice Chair Mary Ann Lucille Sering told Inquirer editors and reporters recently.

She elaborated: “You cannot immediately ban plastic that abounds in every corner. You have to give the local industries that produce it transition time. Because if you kill an industry, you’re also killing some jobs as well.”

Sering made the comment after noting that cities and towns were gradually moving to make constituents discard plastic bags in favor of paper and reusable bags.

She said that a number of local government units, for instance, Muntinlupa City, Lucban, Quezon, and Pagsanjan, Laguna, had either regulated or banned the use of plastic in local businesses as part of efforts to cut down on non-biodegradable trash.

She said local legislation would be the way to go while the national government had yet to enact an anti-plastics law.

She called the local initiative “good in one sense,” but added,“we have to have a balance.”

She said the commission had consulted with people in the plastics industry. “At the end of the day, we told the industry, the ban as a policy would be strongly pursued.”

Sering also expressed alarm about a recent report that some imported and locally-made toys sold in Metro Manila bargain shops and malls had tested positive for toxic metals, including lead and mercury, known to inhibit children’s cognitive and motor development.

The study, released by the anti-toxics group EcoWaste Coalition last week, showed that some 60 toy products out of 200 tested this month contained at least one of these toxic chemicals: Lead, mercury, chromium, antimony, arsenic and cadmium.