Business Community, Stakeholders Back a Circular Economy Through Legislation

Community leaders, government officials, and business owners focused on building a waste management system as the foundation of the Philippine circular economy in a June 24 discussion by Liveable Cities Philippines.

Sustainability and the call to create a circular economy have now been embraced by many in the business community, Liveable Cities Philippines Chairman Guillermo Luz said.

Reducing the need to deplete new resources by recycling and reducing waste also has a business impact, he told The Business Manual at the sidelines of the event held at the Asian Institute of Management in Makati.

“It makes sense for society to divert away from landfill and either extend the life of a product or recycle it into a new product — not necessarily for its original use, but into another use — so that we save on raw materials and on real estate or landfill costs,” he said. “I think that's a powerful enough argument to make.”

There needs to be a change in how waste management is conveyed, according to Ivanna Aguiling-Dela Torre, senior director for East Cluster ASP PACS at Coca-Cola Philippines.

Phrases like “recycle this,” for instance, can be used instead of the term “recyclable.”

These shifts in how waste management is talked about may also encourage people to be part of the solution, she said during the discussion.

“In terms of behavior, we’re hard-wired as people to follow things when it’s told, when it’s an action rather than having to understand the technical term,” she added.

The waste categories provided by the law do not match what is recyclable in practice, such as in the sachet packaging used in consumer products, pointed out Marilen Malabanan, supervising environmental management specialist at San Fernando, Pampanga.

“The problem is the packaging remainers (residuals of the packaging), which are low-value plastics, and the low-value plastics cannot be recycled anymore,” she said in the event.

Low-value plastics are discarded plastic materials where the cost of recycling exceeds the revenue generated from the recycled output. 

Another suggestion put forth was the simplification of waste categories.

“Those [garbage] going to the landfill, those that value, recycle, and can be used another time, and those that can be subject to composting,” said Isaias Ubana, mayor of Lopez, Quezon. “At least three.”