The ban for the use of plastic bags in the Philippines started back in 2012. It started with a few cities in Metro Manila and is still implemented until this very day. As of today, the plastic bag ban is implemented in several cities all throughout the country, but has the ban really improved the environment and the way of living in the country?

Prior to the knowledge of this blog’s authors, the ban of plastic bags in the country was solely based on LCAs done by institutions outside the country and may not be completely suitable for the country’s situation. This is actually one of the reasons why the legislation could not approve of the total plastic ban in the country.

As late as 2011, institutions from other countries had been updating their LCAs to catch up with the latest innovations and to figure out which would actually work best for their country and even better if it would actually apply to the global community. And to this very day, pro-plastics and pro-paper are still arguing which would be more economical and environment-friendly. 

One of the problems being faced by the country is the accumulation of waste plastic especially in waterways. These can be mistaken as food by the aquatic creatures which would cause many problems such as choking, leading to death and is also blamed for causing floods. One reason why plastics are problematic when disposed irresponsibly is due to its non-biodegradable nature (but an innovation is the use of oxobiodegradeble plastics). Due to this there are places that took the initiative to ban plastics starting from Muntinlupa City and Bills have been filed in both Houses of the Congress to ban them nationwide. An alternative to plastics is the use of plastic bags that would be seen in the different establishments. Unlike plastics, paper is easily biodegraded. Seeing how the products interact with the environment after disposal would make anyone easily conclude that paper is a better choice over plastics.

However in the manufacturing side, paper bags need more than a hundred times more water than to produce the same amount of plastic bags. Additionally, paper bags use five times more energy. When one would visit a Pulp and Paper plant, one would see how much wastewater is being produced and how high the loading of contaminants in the wastewater; unlike in a Plastics plant where the wastewater generation and loading is much less since the most important use of water would be for cooling only. From the process side, plastic bags are much more environmentally friendly compared to paper bags.

The main lesson that can be learned is that we should not only look at the “common sense,” easiest or the most straightforward solution to a problem but to look at it from an interdisciplinary approach. One just cannot say that just because plastics cause a set of problems does not mean banning them will remove these problems since the Government can just implement and strictly enforce laws regarding littering to discipline the people. Another, we should not only be limited at choosing paper as the only alternative, as we can see we just replaced something disposable with another object disposable, why can’t we just apply our Hierarchy in Waste Management or more commonly known as the Three R’s by using bayongs, ecobags or the like which are readily reusable so that the use of disposable bags are reduced. On a side note, this “debate” can also be seen as a battle between the two industries trying to be the more “environmentally friendly.” Seeing how many disciplines are needed to examine this debate, Engineers, especially Chemical Engineers, should be able to decide what is the best solution to this problem based not only on the technical knowledge they know about the products and processes but also on the fields such as humanities and social sciences as the society is affected by the Environmental Fate of the solution.

Source: Valisno, Jeffrey. “To plastic or not to plastic, that is the question..” Bworldonline.com. Business