
United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 12, which is all about ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns, is proving to be quite a challenge for the Philippines, which has been identified as among the world’s largest contributors of plastic pollution in the oceans.
According to the UN, “to ensure sustainable consumption and production practices necessarily entails to respect the biophysical boundaries of the planet and to reduce current global consumption rates in order to fit with the biophysical capacity to produce ecosystem services and benefits.”
In a sustainable or circular economy, “products and materials are designed in such a way that they can be reused, remanufactured, recycled, or recovered, and thus maintained in the economy for as long as possible, along with the resources of which they are made, and the generation of waste, especially hazardous waste, is avoided or minimized, and greenhouse gas emissions are prevented or reduced.”
As far as SDG 12 is concerned, the Philippines is ranked 92nd out of 166 countries in the UN’s Sustainable Development Report. Scores are stagnating or increasing at less than half of the required rate for some indicators, including managing municipal solid waste, production-based air pollution, and exports of plastic waste.
This is despite legislation that supports responsible waste management, such as Republic Act 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000 which attempts to create the necessary institutional mechanisms and incentives, appropriate funds, declare certain acts prohibited, and provide penalties. However, it has been clear that the law has either not been enough, or not implemented properly enough to address the problem of waste pollution in the country.
There is also the Extended Producer Responsibility Act passed in 2022, which requires large producers, under the pain of penalties for noncompliance, “reduce and/or recover for reuse, recycling, treatment, or proper ecological disposal the plastic packaging waste that they release or released to the domestic market.”
Sustainable Development Goal 12 will need the cooperation of all Filipinos if we are going to achieve it, whether by 2030 or beyond, because plastic pollution is a serious problem that our country greatly contributes to. Building a circular economy will be tough, but the impacts of doing nothing and polluting the planet are worse.
Let us do more to move closer to making this goal achievable and instead of still going around in circles, start building a truly circular economy.*