By Karen Lema
MANILA, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Armed with gloves, rubber boots
and a rake, "Mangrove Warrior" Willer Gualva, 68, comes to
Freedom Island in the Philippines almost every day to stop it
being engulfed by trash.
No one lives on the island, yet each morning its shores are
covered in garbage, much of it single-use sachets of shampoo,
toothpaste, detergent and coffee that are carried out to sea by
the rivers of overcrowded Manila.
"We collect mostly plastics here and the number one type are
sachets," said Gualva, one of 17 people employed by the
environment agency to help preserve the island and its forest.
The agency, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources
(DENR), calls them "Mangrove Warriors", and pays them slightly
above $8 per day.
Five days of coastal cleanup on the Manila Bay island last
month yielded a total of 16,000 kg of trash, DENR data showed,
the bulk of it plastics, including the sachets made of aluminium
and blends of plastics.
These packets give some of the poorest people in Asia access
to everyday household essentials. For the multinationals that
manufacture them, it's a way to increase sales by targeting
customers who cannot afford bigger quantities.
Such sachets are sold in most developing countries but the
number consumed in the Philippines is staggering - 163 million
pieces a day, according to a recent study by environment group
The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA).
That's almost 60 billion sachets a year, or enough to cover
130,000 soccer fields.
In Manila's slum areas which are inaccessible to garbage
trucks, sachets and other waste are thrown in estuaries or
dumped on the street, and end up clogging drains and waterways.
"Money is hard to come by, so I only buy sachets," said Lisa
Jorillo, 42, a mother of four who lives in a slum in Manila's
Tondo area, behind a beach blanketed by trash.
"It's likely the garbage will still be there when my son
grows up," Jorillo said, referring to her four-year-old.
The Philippines' law on solid waste is poorly enforced and
the country doesn't regulate packaging manufacturing. The
country is ranked third in the world for failing to deal with
its plastics, according to a 2015 study by the University of
Georgia, which said 81 percent of plastics waste in the country
was mismanaged.
SACHETS FOR THE POOR
About 14 million people live in Metro Manila, one of Asia's
teeming mega-cities. Overall, the Philippines has a population
of 107 million people, and one-fifth of them live below the
national poverty line, described by the statistics agency as
monthly consumption of less than $241 per person.
Jorillo's family earns about 2,500 pesos ($48) a week from
the construction work that her husband does, and she and her
family buy about 80 sachets of coffee, toothpaste and shampoo
each month.
In sea-facing Manila, much of the trash ends up in the sea.
The Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and China account
for 60 percent of the world's marine plastic, or 8 million
tonnes annually, according to the Ocean Conservancy non-profit.
Environmentalists say the main culprits aren't governments
or consumers, but the multinationals that churn out plastic
packaging.
"They have money to do research that will remove the
problematic packaging," said Sonia Mendoza, head of the Mother
Earth Foundation, which promotes waste reduction. She said
refilling stations could be one way to reduce the use of
single-use sachets.
The environmental group GAIA studied non-recyclable waste
collected in Philippine cleanups and found that 60 percent of it
came from just 10 companies, led by Nestle NESN.S , Unilever
ULVR.L and Procter & Gamble PG.N .
Nestle declined to disclose the volume of sachets it
produced or sold in the Philippines.
FIGHTING MALNUTRITION
Nestle said it was committed to finding ways to keep
plastics out of oceans through plastic collection and recycling
programmes, but added that sachets prevented leakage of
micro-nutrients essential to addressing malnutrition, especially
among children.
Unilever did not say how many sachets it produces in the
Philippines, but said its global plastic packaging production is
610,000 tonnes annually.
The figure, Unilever said, includes "flexible packaging
formats" used by 1 million micro-businesses in the Philippines.
Nestle and Unilever's target is for 100% of their packaging
to be recyclable or reusable by 2025 worldwide.
Unilever said it has a community-based sachet recovery
programme in the Philippines where collected sachets are
converted to school chairs and cement pavers. It also pilot ran
shampoo and conditioner refilling stations this year, which it
plans to scale up.
P&G referred questions to the industry group Philippine
Alliance for Recycling and Materials Sustainability (PARMS) or
the government's National Solid Waste Management Commission
(NSWMC).
The Philippines government does not have a clear strategy to
tackle its plastics crisis.
In an e-mail response to Reuters, the DENR said it was in
discussions with all manufacturers to identify ways to manage
waste. It provided no details.
Elsewhere in the region, Indonesia has a law requiring
producers to manage non-biodegradable packaging and the tourist
island of Bali bans single-use plastics.
Thailand is between now and 2025 introducing bans on seven
types of plastics most commonly found in the ocean, like bottle
cap seals, disposable bags, cups and straws.
Vietnam hopes to raise taxes on plastic bags and its prime
minister has urged shops to stop using non-recyclable plastics
in cities by 2021, and countrywide by 2025.
ECO-BRICKS
The Philippines industry group PARMS, which includes
Unilever, P&G and Nestle among its members, is building a 25
million pesos ($475,000) facility that aims to turn sachets into
plastic blocks and eco-bricks.
But Von Hernandez, global coordinator for the Break Free
From Plastic movement, calls that "greenwashing" - or only
trying to appear more environmentally friendly.
"They are not really changing the true nature of their
business," Hernandez said of the multinationals. "The plastics
industry is slated to grow exponentially, especially by 2030.
The bulk of that is going to packaging and you can bet this is
going to end up in sachets."
Crispian Lao, president of PARMS, said every effort, even
those which "may be perceived as small and insignificant", helps
address the problem.
Lao said sachets were a necessity for lower income groups,
but added the industry is exploring other delivery formats and
packaging alternatives.
Cynthia Villar, a senator, says she is pushing for a radical
re-write of an existing waste law to force firms to collect,
recycle and dispose of all single-use plastics they produce.
"They always say they're willing to do it. But it's a
different story altogether whether they'll do it, so we have to
embody it in a law so they'll all follow," Villar told Reuters.
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