Plastic pollution is one of the fastest-growing global environmental problems. It has severe impacts on species and ecosystems, as well as increasing public health and development impacts.¹ Vulnerable communities are also disproportionately affected by environmental degradation caused by plastic pollution from production to waste.² 

It is generally assumed that, at the global level, the majority of plastic waste entering the oceans comes from land-based sources, with an estimate of 80%, and that therefore 20% come from sea-based activities. But while research has tried to estimate global inputs of plastic waste into the oceans from land, there is less data regarding the inputs of marine litter from sea-based sources.³

The marine industry is increasingly taking action to tackle plastic pollution and ports that are working at the interface between land and water have a major role to play to reduce the amount of plastic leaking into the marine environment.  

In 2020, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) started a three-year project entitled ‘Clean Ports, Clean Oceans: Improving Port Waste Management in the Philippines’ funded by the Grieg Foundation. The project focuses on three ports in the Philippines, namely the Manila North Port, Port of Batangas, and Port of Cagayan de Oro. The project will work to achieve the following objectives:

• Achieve 50% plastic waste leakage reduction in the three aforementioned Philippine ports;
• Provide input to the Philippines’ National Plan of Action on Marine Litter to highlight the importance of the port industry in addressing plastic pollution; and
• Document the port waste management solutions to enable scaling up in other Philippine and global ports.

In this project, WWF-Philippines works with government agencies, port authorities, local government units, communities, and organizations to implement solutions and interventions to achieve the goals of the project.

Sources: 

¹ Center for International Environmental Law, "Plastic & Health: The Hidden Costs of a Plastic Planet," 2019; N. J. Beaumont, M. Aanesen, M. C. Austen, T. Börger, J. R. Clark, M. Cole, T. Hooper, P. K. Lindeque, C. Pascoe and K. J. Wyles, "Global ecological, social and economic impacts of marine plastic," ScienceDirect, 2019; The Pew Charitable Trust, SYSTEMIQ, "Breaking the Plastic Wave," Science, 2020

² United Nations Environment Programme, "Neglected: Environmental Justice Impacts of Marine Litter and Plastic Pollution," Nairobi, 2021

³ Food and Agriculture Organization, Committee on Fisheries, Sea-based sources of marine litter – A review of current knowledge and assessment of data gaps, Second Interim Report of GESAMP Working Group 43, 4 June 2020