LGUs urged to enforce plastic ban

Plastic bags are lethal—even on All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.

The celebration of all saints and the commemoration of all faithful departed, which this year falls on a weekend, should not be a reason for cities and towns to be lax in the enforcement of local laws banning plastic bags, a coalition of green groups said on Friday.

The EcoWaste Coalition urged local government units (LGUs) with ordinances banning plastic bags to fully enforce their regulations as millions of Filipinos visit cemeteries to honor the departed.

“The mammoth gathering of people in public and private cemeteries during Undas (All Saints’ Day) should not be used to justify the laid-back enforcement of key environmental measures such as the various LGU ordinances banning plastic bags,” said environmentalist Sonia Mendoza in a press statement.

Mendoza is the head of EcoWaste’s Task Force on Plastics and chair of the Mother Earth Foundation.

Stores and vendors doing their business inside and outside the cemeteries should not be exempt from following such ordinances, which are meant to promote and protect the common good, Mendoza said.

“We hope that concerned LGUs will take extra steps to ensure that such ordinances are not relegated to the trash bins as the age-old practice of remembering the dead is observed,” she said.

“Let it not be said that those tasked to enforce these environmental ordinances were sleeping on the job and allowed the deluge of plastic bags right under their noses,” Mendoza added.

“Vendors, we also hope, will cooperate and observe the restrictions on the use of plastic bags, as well as polystyrene containers, accordingly,” she added.