MANILA: The Philippines has started marketing of final products crafted from recovered plastic waste at a facility in Paranaque, Metro Manila.

The country has deployed more than a thousand rangers employed by the government to clean up the city’s waterways, where tonnes of rubbish end up every year.

The Philippines produces about 61,000 tonnes of trash every day, up to 24 per cent of it plastic, figures from the

environment department show. The country is the world’s top source of plastic that ends up in the oceans, a 2021 study by Dutch non-profit The Ocean Cleanup found.

It said the Pasig river, which flows through the capital and into Manila Bay, is the “most polluting” in the world. Sachets and other single-use plastics are a huge part of the problem.

“When the rains come, we are literally swimming (in) them,” Environment Secretary Maria Antonia Loyzaga said.

“But on a daily basis, we consume plastics in the fish caught in our seas, through the substandard water bottles we use and in the very air we breathe,” Loyzaga added.

Plastic litters the ground even though city sanitation workers visit several times a year to teach residents about waste segregation.

In Manila, where more than 14 million people live, only 60pc of rubbish is collected, sorted and recycled daily, according to a 2022 World Bank report.

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2024