Last September 21, 2019, Rappler, together with De La Salle Philippines and De La Salle University, hosted the 2019 Philippine Social Good Summit at the Yuchengco Hall of De La Salle University Manila. With the theme “Insight for Impact,” the summit hopes to challenge Filipinos to cut through the social media noise to build communities of action that will help make the world a better place. The main event of the summit aims to shine a light on the most urgent global concerns along with critical social issues in the Philippines such as the climate crisis, urban congestion, plastics and waste management, and traffic.

As part of the second panel, which focuses on plastics and waste, Melody Melo-Rijk, WWF-Philippines’ Project Manager for Sustainable Consumption and Production, talked about two of the organization’s most recent initiatives - The Sustainable Diner project and the No Plastics in Nature initiative - both highlighting the need for Filipino consumers, businesses, and policymakers to come together to lessen the production and consumption of single-use plastics in the various industries shaping our economy and improve the way by which we manage them when they do end up as waste. Melo-Rijk was joined on the stage by Monique Obligacion, the Community Administrator of Buhay Zero-Waste, Dr. Fabian “Toby” Dayrit, Vice President of the National Academy of Science and Technology, and Joy Cacal, the Public Affairs and Sustainability Manager of Coca-Cola. This panel was moderated by Pia Ranada, one of Rappler’s top multimedia reporters.

Ranada opened the panel by letting Obligacion state the problem we have on waste so succinctly. “We’ve been conditioned to think that as long as we throw our waste in the proper place, then we’re okay. But the problem isn’t littering or throwing your waste improperly; the problem is that we have waste to throw in the first place.”

In Filipino society, children are taught from a young age, both at home and in school, to learn how to segregate trash properly. Kindergarten notes are already filled with the words “biodegradable” and “non-biodegradable,” or its Tagalog counterparts, “nabubulok” o “di-nabubulok,” in an effort to inculcate an environmental mindset as early as possible. Although this culture has been successful in letting Filipinos understand why it is important that we segregate our trash, it does not help that economic difficulties have resulted in the proliferation of another distinct Filipino culture - the ‘tingi’ mindset, commonly encouraged in establishments such as sari-sari stores and other forms of ‘suking tindahan.’ With this in mind, it is easy to realize that our current education system doesn’t exactly tackle the root cause of the problem we are currently experiencing - why does waste have to exist in the first place, anyway?

Talking about plastics in general and why, as a material, it is considered very reliable, Melo-Rijk affirmed that at the end of the day, people would still instinctively go for convenience over sustainability. In fact, in some industries, items that are made of plastic are still preferred when it comes to the issue of sanitation. “For The Sustainable Diner project, we work with restaurants and hotels to help them make their operations more sustainable, from sourcing to waste management. For food service businesses, plastics are often used especially in food handling and in dealing with food safety issues,”’ says Melo-Rijk. “But talking about this in the lens of waste management, the main point would be that plastics, by themselves, don’t just appear out of nowhere and enter our ocean ecosystems. There’s a reason why they get to the ocean in the first place.”