Plastic bags still heavily utilized across the city

During her recent privilege speech, outgoing Bacolod City Councilor Em Ang discussed her tenure on the Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP), touting the “Plastic Bag Regulation Ordinance,” which she authored in 2011, wherein business establishments were not allowed to “utilize, sell, or provide plastic bags.”
“The plastic bag regulation ordinance was my education on how, being a councilor, I would be constantly placed in positions where I have to choose between what is popular and what is right,” she said.
In August 2017, she also penned a follow-up resolution urging Bacolod City Mayor Evelio Leonardia to strictly enforce the previously passed legislation.
The ordinance defined plastic bag as “a type of bag made of thin, flexible, plastic film that is designed to be provided or utilized at the point of sale for containing, carrying, holding, and transporting goods.” The subsequent piece of legislation also claimed various establishments, including food kiosks and market vendors, “do not comply with the provisions provided by the ordinance.”
The document goes on to suggest the said establishments, which included roving vendors and sari-sari stores, provide “alternative packaging material” for free; which Section 5 of the ordinance describes as reusable bags, woven bags, cloth bags, rattan baskets, among others.
However, business establishments continue to utilize plastic bags. In addition, while reusable bags have been made available, oftentimes, customers are assessed a fee to acquire such items.
The resolution also sought the enforcement of penalties, which includes a P1,000 fine for any individual or business in violation of the ordinance. A second offense carries a P3,000 fine, while a third offense is assessed a P5,000 fine and up to six months in jail. Meanwhile, on a third offense, businesses caught in violation of the ordinance will see their business license canceled for one year.
At the time of passage, businesses were given a one-year moratorium to dispose of their inventory of plastic bags.
Considering plastic bags still appear to be the primary method for transporting items such as groceries, it has yet to be reported, since the ordinance’s initial passage in 2011, how much in revenue the city has accumulated from fines assessed from various business establishment and vendors found in violation of the said policies.
Additionally, given the said continued proliferation of plastic bags, particularly from the major supermarkets in town, it has also not been revealed how many have gave suspended business licences or served time in jail for said offenses.
In contrast, following the SP passing an ordinance banning plastic stirrers and straws last November, several businesses in Bacolod City no longer provide straws for their customers in compliance with the regulation.
The policy cited experts who claimed at least 437 million plastic straws are dumped along the world’s coastlines; however, according to a Channel News Asia report earlier that year, American Chemistry Council Plastics Division Vice President Steven Russell said the real issue is not plastic straws themselves but fixing poor waste management practices.
Russell went on to call the plastic straw problem “0.2 percent of the waste stream.”/WDJ

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