After officials of Tarlac and Bulacan provinces objected to the dumping of garbage from Canada in their landfills, concerned groups also urged the Quezon City government to pass a resolution opposing any plan to dispose of the foreign waste in Payatas.
A proposed resolution filed by Quezon City Councilor Dorothy Delarmente noted that the Bureau of Customs “[was] reportedly scurrying for alternative sites where the illegal garbage imports from Canada can be disposed of after Tarlac and Bulacan provincial officials raised legitimate objections to foreign waste being dumped in local landfills.”
It expressed strong disapproval to any move to dump the garbage from Canada at the Payatas Sanitary Landfill in Quezon City.
“The Quezon City Council finds the dumping of foreign waste in our country totally inexcusable and unacceptable and demands that such unethical and unlawful act be brought [to] a halt,” the proposed resolution said.
Aileen Lucero, coordinator of EcoWaste Coalition, said the resolution should be swiftly adopted by the city council, noting that its passage would be a “great gift that the councilors can give as the city marks on Aug. 19 the 137th birth anniversary of former President Manuel Luis Quezon after whom the city was named.”
“They will surely earn ‘ganda’ and ‘pogi’ points for saying ‘no’ against dumping,” Lucero said.
“Whether hazardous or not as some quarters would claim, the controversial garbage would not qualify as ‘municipal waste’ because it’s not locally generated,” she added.
Other Quezon City-based groups, such as Ang NARS, Ban Toxics, Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino-NCR, Greenpeace and Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment, have also expressed support for the proposed resolution.
EcoWaste said that from June 2013 to January 2014, a total of 103 shipping containers of mixed garbage from Canada misdeclared as “plastic scraps” for recycling were exported to the Philippines. At least 26 of these were dumped at a landfill in Capas, Tarlac, from June 26 to July 8.