The Philippines is considered a high-risk flood country very vulnerable to typhoons, monsoon rains and sea-level rises, as demonstrated by Typhoons Kalmaegi and Fung-wong in early November, which left a trail of devastation in their wake.
The issue is a nuanced one. While climate change has certainly been a leading cause of the numerous massive floods the nation’s people have had to endure, corruption and poor governmental accountability have also resulted in ‘ghost’ flood-control projects and substandard works that have exacerbated the impact of the disasters.
At the same time, many also point their fingers at plastics waste – particularly single-use plastics such as bags, sachets, cups and straws – that clog already poor drainage systems and rivers. When stormwater cannot pass through blocked canals, the water overflows onto streets and into homes, triggering floods, even when the downpours are just short but intense. Beyond the huge risks to people’s lives, floods damage infrastructure and disrupt local economies.
In 2019, Filipinos used a combined total of 164 million sachets and 48 million plastics bags each day, according to the ‘Waste Assessments and Brand Audit’ report by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. Meanwhile, as much as 70 per cent of the Metro Manila’s drainage systems are clogged with silt and garbage – much of it plastics waste – says the Department of Public Works and Highways.
It’s not as though the Philippines doesn’t have any legislation to address the problem of plastics waste, or even just waste in general. The country is supposed to have a List of Non-Environmentally Acceptable Products and Packaging Materials (NEAP), which includes single-use plastics packaging. One of the key provisions of the country’s Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000 (RA 9003), the aim of NEAP was to prohibit such products and packaging according to a schedule.
After RA 9003 was signed in 2000, the National Solid Waste Management Commission (NSWMC) under the Department of Environment and Natural Resources was supposed to prepare the NEAP within a year in compliance with the act. NSWMC is an entity under the Office of the President made up of 17 representatives from government and the private sector.
It was only after more than two decades, in 2021, that NSWMC declared plastics soft drink straws and coffee stirrers as NEAP – but that was as far as it went.
In August 2024, the Court of Appeals had to compel NSWMC to create/release the list within six months in its ruling granting the Writ of Kalikasan and continuing mandamus (writ) petitioned by environmental groups and advocates. The Writ of Kalikasan is an ‘extraordinary remedy issued to stop whatever act is being done that is harmful to the environment or to compel the commission of certain protective acts’.
It was only after the court ruling that NSWMC started a series of technical working group meetings, finally releasing a list in December 2024 that was ridiculed by environmental advocacy groups for only containing four products, each of which were already restricted or banned through existing regulations.
The four products were: paints with lead content exceeding 90 parts per million; toys, school supplies, and children’s accessories containing phthalate; water pipes and other products containing lead; and feeding bottles and sippy cups (beakers) made with bisphenol A.
Single-use plastics in any form were not on the NEAP. However, the December 2024 resolution that NSWMC released about NEAP did state that it would ‘further study’ 35 other items, including: plastics shopping bags, sachets, drink containers, plastics candy and snack wrappers, food covering plastics films/plastics films/cling wraps, noodle packaging, PP items, PET bottles, film labels (PP or PVC), and paper packaging products.
Whether there will be any conclusions reached from the ‘further study’, whether more petitions and another court ruling will be needed to push NSWMC into action again, and whether we’ll have to wait another two decades to see anything out of the NEAP – all three are anyone’s guess.
And, if a more thoughtful NEAP is released, it still might not result in anything meaningful.
Paper tigers
The RA 9003 also contains laws that dictate proper waste segregation, collection, transport, storage, treatment, and disposal of solid waste. However, without actual proper infrastructure and implementation, those laws are just paper tigers.
A case in point is the Philippines’s Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Act (formally known as the Republic Act No. 11898 as part of the RA 9003), which was lauded when made law in July 2022 as one of the world’s most ambitious EPR legislations.
This act requires companies with at least 100 million pesos ($1.7m) in assets to take responsibility for a percentage of their plastics packaging footprint, starting at 20 per cent in 2023 and incrementally increasing to 80 per cent by 2028 and beyond.
This covers flexible plastics packaging (for example, single-layered or multilayered sachets, labels, and laminates), rigid plastics packaging (for example, containers for beverage, food, household products, personal care products, and cosmetics), plastics bags, and polystyrene (PS) foam packaging (such as PS cups and food containers, and protective packaging for electronics).
Depending on the severity of non-compliance, businesses could be fined between $89,000 to $357,000 for repeat offences, and stripped of their business licences.
In essence, companies have to submit an EPR plan to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) through the National Ecology Centre, meet the progressive targets each year, and then submit annual EPR compliance audit reports to DENR. EPR plans could be made individually or collectively with other obliged businesses, or via a Producer Responsibility Organisation.
Financial incentives to encourage compliance are available and include tax incentives, allowing expenses related to EPR activities (for example, waste recovery) to be tax deductible, and tax and duty exemption of donations to local government units, enterprises or NGOs for programmes promoting solid waste management.
However, it has only really been the giant plastics packaging producers, importers and brand owners that have complied and, in some cases, gone beyond annual minimum recovery targets. One could argue these businesses were already implementing strategies globally and, hence, would naturally have met goals set by the Philippines anyway.
For example, Aboitiz Foods, the food and agribusiness arm of the Aboitiz Group – a Filipino conglomerate with locations across Asia-Pacific – claimed it exceeded the 2024 EPR target of 40 per cent by recovering 326.42 per cent of its rigid plastics footprint and 63.8 per cent of flexible plastics.
This was achieved through reforms such as introducing lighter packaging with 20 per cent less plastics, switching to bulk formats across certain product lines, and implementing bulk truck loading systems at multiple feed mills. It also upcycled packaging waste into products such as aprons, bags, and pouches by engaging in local creative community projects.
L’Oreal Group, which had launched sustainability commitments in 2020 to meet goals it set out to achieve by 2030 – including having 100 per cent of the plastics used in its product packaging coming from recycled or bio-based sources by 2023 – announced in August 2023 its commitment to recovering and recycling 100 per cent of its yearly plastics waste volume in the Philippines starting from that year itself.
In May 2025, L’Oreal declared that it had successfully recovered 875 tonnes of equivalent plastics waste since 2023. It did not clarify whether that was all 100 per cent of its annual plastics waste volume.
Mondelēz International also claims to have been exceeding EPR targets in the country. Speaking at a conference in Singapore in June this year, Mondelēz Philippines corporate and government affairs lead Caitlin Punzalan said: “Our support for the EPR law is proof … where we not only meet the requirement for collection and diversion of 20 to 80 per cent of our post-consumer plastics packaging, but we have also exceeded it since 2023.”
Mondelēz has had a corporate sustainability strategy in place for years. As at the end of 2024, the brand giant has designed 96 per cent of its packaging globally to be recyclable, and it is working to reduce virgin plastics use by 5 per cent by 2025, over 2020 levels.
While it is easy to be cynical about brand-owner targets, it is also important to not be dismissive of the efforts of major players in the Philippines to meet EPR goals and implement sustainable strategies, in a country that could greatly benefit from them across all levels – whether environmental, social, or economic. After all, many drops make up the ocean, however polluted by marine waste it may be.
However, without true commitment at the governmental level for sustainable change (starting with a truly actionable NEAP), it is highly probable that floods in the Philippines – even those originally caused by natural typhoons – will continue to be made worse by drainage systems blocked by packaging waste.
By Trina Tan
