EcoWaste Leads Move Against Canadian Illegal Dumping
Friday, 01 February 2019
For the past six years, EcoWaste Coalition, an IPEN participating organization from the Philippines that promotes chemical safety and zero waste, has been leading a movement to demand that Canada repatriate illegally dumped toxic household waste, which has been rotting in Philippine ports.
At issue are 103 shipping container vans of mixed garbage from Canada that were exported to the Philippines under the guise of “recycled goods.” The scandal began in 2013 when Canadian shipping containers entered Philippine ports and wrongly declared the household garbage as scrap plastics for recycling. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had made assurances in 2017 that he would resolve the stinking waste scandal. Today, the problem still festers.
A coalition of Philippine environmentalists have demanded that Canada take its trash back six years after more than 200 million kg of household waste was dumped in the Southeast Asian nation.
Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental/Quezon City. The waste and pollution watch group, EcoWaste Coalition, applauded the departure from the Philippines of 51 containers of illegal garbage exports from South Korea extolling the move as a “triumph for environmental justice, morality and the rule of law.”
The 51 containers of illegal garbage languishing at the Mindanao International Container Terminal (MICT) in Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental were finally shipped back Sunday to South Korea where the assorted wastes came from several months ago.
Discovery of over 5,000 tons of South Korean hazardous waste on the Philippine island of Mindanao marks a rising trend of illegal foreign dumping on the island nation
Quezon City. The governments of the Philippines and South Korea have reached agreement that will ensure the repatriation of some 6,500 tons of mixed wastes stranded at Misamis Oriental to their origin in Pyeongtaek City this January.
High levels of toxic substances have been found in over 32% of children’s toys tested in a recent analysis of toxic heavy metals and chemicals in toys on the market in the Philippines. None of the samples, including a toy with 198,900 ppm of lead, provided a list of chemicals that make up a toy nor provided text or graphic warnings. The study, released on the Universal Children’s Day on November 20, the day when the UN General Assembly adopted the “Declaration of the Rights of the Child” in 1959 as well as the “Convention on the Rights of the Child” in 1989, underscores the need to expedite the enactment of the proposed Safe and Non-Toxic Children’s Product Act in the Philippines. The Act seeks to regulate the manufacture, importation, distribution and sale of children’s toys, school supplies, childcare articles and other related products containing toxic chemicals beyond the permissible limits. The study was conducted by the EcoWaste Coalition, a public interest NGO in the Philippines, and IPEN, a global network of public interest health and environment NGOs.
